Data centers. Do they really create large numbers of new jobs? What about their demand for large amounts of water to cool their operations? What about the electrical-power demand that goes hand-in-hand with new data centers and will it mean consumers will pay the cost through higher electric bills?
Those are questions not just being asked by residents in Broken Arrow, Coweta, Stillwater and Yukon in Oklahoma but throughout the country.
Opposition and skepticism are abound in neighboring states as indicated by published reports. The Wichita Eagle reports skepticism is rampant in central Kansas where some counties have adopted moratoriums on data centers, some as long as three years.
The newspaper noted that three-year moratoriums on data centers were adopted by Harvey and Saline Counties in central Kansas. Harvey is home to Newton where the Amtrak railway passes through with a stop from Kansas City. Salina is the largest city in Saline county and sits right in the middle of Kansas along Interstate 70.
The two cities say they adopted the moratoriums to give their staff more time to consider regulations of data centers. The Eagle explained Salina is considering regulations as well for nuclear power and hydrogen-based operations.
“I know there’s been concern raised that this would say, ‘Oh, Saline County is not open for business… if we put a temporary moratorium on these types of uses,’” County Administrator Philip Smith-Hanes told the Eagle.
“We are not open for business to the same extent that Sedgwick County, Butler County, Harvey County, McPherson County and Dickinson County are not open for business, because all of those adjacent counties have either had or are in the process of having a moratorium on one or more of these uses.”
The Harvey County moratorium won’t expire until the end of 2028 and was created, according to a Harvey County statement, to give the county “time to research, consider or create regulations governing future development concerning data centers.”
McPherson County, just north of Newton also has a moratorium on data centers and it will end the first of December of this year.
“This will allow for the time to perform a thorough and comprehensive review of the impact of data centers in the community,” McPherson County Planning Director Jon Kinsey said in an email to The Eagle.
A six-month moratorium was adopted recently by Riley County Commissioners in Manhattan, Kansas, according to the Manhattan Mercury.
Commissioners emphasized the moratorium does not signal whether these facilities will ultimately be permitted in some form or outright banned.
“My thoughts are a moratorium until we learn more about it and really look into it to learn more about what would be involved,” commissioner Greg McKinley said.
Canary Media reported the rejections of data centers and the government leaders who introduced them are growing rapidly across the country.
Just as large-loads are topics of concern among Oklahoma Corporation Commissioners and the state legislature, they are also a topic of worry in other states. Canary Media reported that this week Port Washington, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee voted by a roughly 2-to-1 margin to require that city leaders get voter approval before awarding tax breaks to data centers and other large development projects.
It came in response to a $15 billion OpenAI and Oracle megaproject under construction in the city. While Port Washington voters voiced their demands, so did residents of Festus, Missouri where they voted to oust every incumbent on their City Council, in large part because the decision-makers had approved a controversial $6 billion data center in the area.
As OK Energy Today has reported, the residents of Coweta, Oklahoma were so angry over the handling of a proposed data center, they have called for the firing of the city manager.
According to Canary Media, there was a more violent reaction in Indianapolis where someone fired over a dozen bullets at City Council member Ron Gibson’s home on Monday, and left a note reading “No Data Centers” on the legislator’s doorstep.
He had publicly supported a data center project in Indianapolis.
Other data center issues have the attention of voters including Monterey Park, California, where a coming vote will determine in June whether to completely ban construction of the facilities. In the fall, Boulder City, Nevada, will vote on whether a municipally owned plot should host a data center, and residents in Janesville, Wisconsin, will decide whether to add more hurdles to a project turning a former General Motors plant into a data center.
The prospect of a large data center in Colorado Springs was met with opposition too, according to Colorado Public Radio.
A large crowd showed up at a recent community meeting for “Project Taurus”, a proposed data center. Developers want to retrofit an existing industrial space into an AI operation.
“It was the first public meeting for the data center plan, with standing room only, and a warning from the fire marshal that the room was overcrowded. Organizers broke up what was supposed to be one meeting into two separate meetings as a result of the turnout,” reported CPR.