The internet is not a cloud. It has a body — concrete, steel, copper, and water. Every message you send, every song you stream, every AI model you query runs through a physical building full of servers. These buildings are called data centers. They are the infrastructure on which the digital world depends. And they are not distributed evenly, cheaply, or without cost.
As of mid-2026, the United States has approximately 5,400 data centers. Northern Virginia alone houses over 200 facilities carrying more than 70% of global internet traffic. Data centers can consume 4.5 million gallons of water per day and as much electricity as 100,000 homes. In Q1 2026 alone, an estimated $130 billion in projects were blocked or delayed — equal to all of 2025 combined. Opposition groups now operate in 49 states, up from 396 groups at year-end 2025 to 833. A March 2026 Gallup poll found 71% of Americans oppose data centers in their area — higher than opposition to nuclear plants. This page is a factual resource. It maps where data centers are, what they consume, how communities have responded, and what may change if the technology they're built for becomes more efficient — or obsolete.
The data center buildout accelerated dramatically from 2023 to 2025. In 2026, the opposition accelerated faster.
According to Data Center Watch, the first quarter of 2026 saw $130 billion in projects blocked or delayed — a figure equal to the entirety of 2025. 75 individual projects were halted. Community opposition groups swelled from 396 to 833 from year-end 2025 to mid-2026, now active in 49 states. The phenomenon is no longer NIMBY — it is a mainstream political force.
A March 2026 Gallup poll captured the breadth of the shift: 71% of Americans oppose data centers near their homes, with 48% strongly opposed. This exceeds opposition to nuclear power plants (53%). No demographic group shows majority support — not by age, race, education, income, or urban/rural split. Even Republicans, who typically favor industrial development, register strong majority opposition. In the Midwest and South — where many projects are planned — opposition hits 76%.
The top reasons citizens cite: resource use (50%), quality of life (20%), higher utility bills (20%), and pollution (16%). What began as scattered resident complaints in 2024 has become, by summer 2026, a factor governors and federal legislators can no longer ignore.
A data center is a building — often a warehouse-scale facility — filled with servers, networking equipment, and cooling systems. They store and process digital information. Some are hyperscale (run by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Meta), some are colocation facilities (multiple companies rent space), and some are enterprise (built by a single company for its own use).
Loudoun County, Virginia, is the densest concentration of data centers on earth. Approximately 30 million square feet of data center space — the equivalent of ten Nashville downtowns — sits in a county of 440,000 people. For decades, the county offered generous tax incentives that made it the default location for internet infrastructure.
In March 2025, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors eliminated by-right development for data centers. New facilities now require a special exception — a legislative review process with mandatory public hearings. Fairfax County and Prince William County, adjacent to Loudoun, have also adopted new size limits, noise study requirements, and residential setback rules. Multiple projects have been halted or withdrawn due to community opposition.
Data centers use approximately 7.4% of Arizona's total electricity. New facilities have concentrated in the Phoenix metro area, where water is already scarce and summer temperatures push cooling demands to extremes. In June 2026, Governor Katie Hobbs signed a three-year moratorium on the state's data center sales tax exemption (July 2026–June 2029), prohibiting the Arizona Commerce Authority from accepting new applications.
Data centers consume 11.4% of Oregon's electricity — the highest share of any state. In June 2026, Governor Kotek signed House Bill 4084, barring new data centers from accessing Oregon's Enterprise Zones property tax incentive program. The moratorium gives a state advisory committee time to study environmental, energy, and economic impacts before the 2027 legislative session.
In September 2025, Jerome Township trustees imposed a nine-month moratorium on new data center construction. Residents raised concerns about noise, energy use, and the fact that existing facilities received tax breaks negotiated by county officials — meaning the township itself saw little commercial tax revenue.
Governor Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission in 2026 to ensure data centers pay for their own electric infrastructure costs so residential ratepayers are not burdened. His 2027 legislative agenda includes potential repeal of data center sales tax exemptions, mandatory water-efficient cooling systems, and siting and setback requirements. Notably, he did not propose a full moratorium — Texas has the second-highest concentration of data centers in the U.S.
Governor J.B. Pritzker directed a pause on all data center tax incentives beginning July 1, 2026, and is pushing for further restrictions — including residential ratepayer protections, demand response programs, water permitting, and clean air standards — during the fall 2026 veto session.
Florida enacted Senate Bill 484 (Chapter 2026-65), effective July 1, 2026 — among the most comprehensive state data center laws to date. It defines a "large load" customer (anticipated monthly peak load of 50 megawatts or more), creates cost-shifting protections so utilities cannot pass data center infrastructure costs onto residential and small-business ratepayers, imposes water-allocation permit requirements, and expressly empowers local governments to set stricter standards or deny projects. It also orders a state study of large-scale data centers.
Oklahoma's SB 1488 imposes a moratorium on new data centers with an electrical load over 100 megawatts until November 1, 2029, to allow the state utility commission to study impacts on water supply, utility rates, and property values. A companion measure, HB 4424, ends tax incentives for data centers not yet in operation by January 1, 2027.
South Dakota's SB 232 proposes a one-year moratorium on the expansion or new construction of hyperscale data centers, while permitting smaller facilities to continue.
Oldham County imposed an indefinite moratorium on data center applications. A developer with a 100 MW project that had already applied for land use permits subsequently abandoned the project entirely.
Monterey Park became the first U.S. city to enact a permanent ban on new data center construction in 2026.
One proposed facility has become a national flashpoint. The Stratos Project in Box Elder County, Utah — backed by Kevin O'Leary — would span 40,000 acres with up to 9 gigawatts of capacity, in a region already in deep drought. BYU ecologist Ben Abbott told the Guardian: "I haven't found a single person in favor of this. I think this project is mortally wounded." O'Leary accused opponents of being Chinese-funded; they were not.
On March 25, 2026, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act. The bill would impose a nationwide halt on constructing or upgrading data centers with a power demand of 20 MW or more until strong national safeguards are in place — including guarantees that data centers do not raise consumer electricity costs, that affected communities have the right to approve or reject projects, and that developers use union labor and pay prevailing wages. It would also bar government subsidies for AI data center construction, upgrading, or operation. Whether the act will gain traction in Congress remains to be seen, but its existence signals that data center policy has reached the federal level.
Brookings Institution fellow and former FCC chair Tom Wheeler, writing in July 2026, framed the conflict in stark terms: "Fundamentally, this is a fight about power and whether it will be exercised by democratic institutions or those that control the infrastructure of AI."
The AI industry has responded with money: the Leading the Future super PAC has raised $140 million, including $50 million from a16z and $50 million from OpenAI president Greg Brockman. Counter-organized by Guardrails Alliance, rank-and-file tech workers collecting small-dollar donations.
Community opposition to data centers is now active in 49 U.S. states. Data Center Watch tracked 833 organized opposition groups as of mid-2026 — more than double the 396 at year-end 2025. $130 billion in potential investment was blocked or delayed in Q1 2026 alone. More than 100 localities have enacted some form of moratorium. Gallup polling puts nationwide opposition at 71%. What began as scattered resident complaints in 2024 has become a national political force.
38 states currently offer tax incentives for data centers; 28 states are considering legislation to end or curtail those benefits. The shift is bipartisan: Republican governors in Texas, Democratic governors in Arizona and Illinois, and local officials across the political spectrum are all moving in the same direction.
By mid-2026, data center disputes had crossed from zoning hearings into elections. In May and June 2026 alone, voters in California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas launched recall efforts against elected officials over their handling of data center proposals.
Ballotpedia tracked at least eight local ballot measures related to data centers across six states — California, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin — in 2026, with additional recall and referendum efforts in Arizona, Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas that did not reach the ballot.
Modern data centers can consume 4.5 million gallons of water per day — equivalent to a small city's daily usage. A June 2026 Guardian analysis found that 64% of planned new data centers are sited in drought-affected regions. Aggregate water demand is projected to reach 73 billion gallons per year by 2028, up from 17 billion in 2023 — a more than fourfold increase in five years.
In water-stressed regions of the American West, this creates direct competition between data centers and agriculture — and residential water supplies. As Ranchbot CEO Andrew Coppin put it: "Ranchers are being told to be conservative with water, and now there's a new competing interest able to get near unlimited access. ChatGPT is a pretty nice tool, but most people would prefer to have a beef steak if they had to choose."
Data centers and data transmission networks have a larger carbon footprint than the airline industry and account for more than 1% of total greenhouse gas emissions nationally, according to the International Energy Agency.
In Washington County, Oregon, residents report residential electricity rates rising by nearly 50% while data centers pay less than half the rate per kilowatt-hour that households do. New substations are built to serve data centers, and the costs are spread across all ratepayers. One Oregon organizer described the dynamic bluntly: "families are subsidizing corporate infrastructure."
Data centers are typically windowless concrete buildings surrounded by generators and cooling equipment. They create persistent low-frequency noise — the hum of cooling fans and backup generators running continuously. When built adjacent to residential neighborhoods, they become a 24-hour presence. Residents of Briarfield Estates in Loudoun County report the hum as a constant, inescapable feature of daily life.
Heat island effects have also been documented: large facilities can warm surrounding land by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, altering local microclimates.
Hyperscale data centers typically employ 20–50 people after construction. The construction jobs — often cited in economic impact projections — last one to two years. Harvard's Gazette, citing University of Michigan researcher Ben Green, noted: "It's a significant false promise." Virginia and Georgia alone lost over $1 billion in tax revenue in one year that could have gone to schools and infrastructure.
The following is a partial list of communities where data center development has been challenged, paused, or permanently halted:
The same questions recur across every contested development: Who decided this should be built here? What are the long-term costs, and who pays them? How much water and power does it use? Is the tax revenue worth what we're giving up? And — increasingly — will this building still be needed in ten years?
Data centers are built on 30-year bonds, designed for a specific technical architecture: large clusters of power-hungry GPUs running transformer-based models at scale. This architecture is not guaranteed to remain dominant.
Several forces point toward dramatic efficiency gains over the next three to ten years:
The industry is not blind to this. As of mid-2026, approximately half of the data center projects planned for the year have been canceled or delayed. Some of this is community opposition. Some is financial: investors recognize that building for today's compute model carries risk when the model is evolving rapidly. Some is the growing recognition that the jobs-and-tax-revenue promise does not survive scrutiny.
This page describes physical infrastructure and community response. It does not argue that data centers are good or bad. They are infrastructure — necessary for the digital services people rely on. The question is whether we are building them thoughtfully: in the right places, at the right scale, with community consent, and with an honest accounting of long-term costs versus the risk that the technology they serve will outgrow them.
We turned this resource into a debate. Environmental activist Justin Chambliss vs. techno-futurist Allison Andrews, moderated by John Shiloh Beaumont II, punctuated by Zebulon Sheridan. With ads from a vanished Chattanooga. Listen to Episode 3: Data Centers — The Internet's Body.
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