If Data Centers Are So Great, Why Are They Being Built in Secret?
We Have A Transparency Problem When It Comes To Data Center Construction
I have spent my career listening to the people, especially those who were told to sit down and be quiet, who were told their backyard was safe, and that the water was safe to drink….
I’ve shown up to community after community across the country for decades because the people who live in these towns invite me. I get hundreds of emails every single day, and what they say boils down to two little words: help me.
So when I started hearing from people about AI data centers appearing in their communities with little to no notice, I paid attention.
On April 27, I put out a simple ask: if you have concerns about an AI data center near you, tell me about it. I expected some response. What I got was a flood.
We started with 30 reports on the map at BrockovichDataCenter.com. In a month, 3,862 residents submitted reports. The map now has 2,716 pins and represents 49 states. The single most common concern—more than noise, more than water usage, more than rising utility bills—is the one word that keeps appearing in submission after submission: transparency.
Residents are using words like silenced, ignored, secretive, and not seen and not heard.
They write about back-door deals and NDAs. They describe showing up to planning meetings only to find out the decisions have already been made.
They’re watching their utility bills climb, finding sick animals they can’t explain, and worrying about the long-term impacts on their health and property values. These complaints are not small. They show a national pattern.
When you hear about issues in one community here or there, it looks bad. But when you line these communities up side by side, you see the larger picture.
So let me ask the question directly: if AI data centers are such a tremendous benefit to communities, why are so many of them being built without meaningful community input?
The Scale of What’s Being Built
To understand what communities are dealing with, you first have to understand the scale of what is being constructed, and how fast it’s all happening.
I’m not talking about a handful of buildings going up quietly in industrial zones. What we’re seeing is a wholesale remaking of the American landscape, town by town, county by county.
In the flatlands of northeast Louisiana, know for soybean fields and dense clusters of rivercane, Meta is building a 4-million-square-foot AI campus called Hyperion. When finished, it will consume more electricity than the entire city of New Orleans and cover a footprint the size of lower Manhattan.
“Meta’s investment establishes the region as an anchor in Louisiana’s rapidly expanding tech sector, revitalizes one of our state’s beautiful rural areas and creates opportunities for Louisiana workers to fill high-paying jobs of the future,” said Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry in a press statement. “I thank Meta for their commitment to our state.”
Diane Cobb, a resident of Holly Ridge an unincorporated community in Richland Parish, said she found out about the data center the way everyone else in her community did—when they started digging.
“Nobody told us anything,” she told New Orleans Public Radio. “They supposedly had a big meeting. The whole community was supposed to come. Nobody knew anything about it. Ever.”
At a meeting at Diane’s house in February, local community members brought their questions.
Why does their water sometimes turns brown?
Why has their electricity has been shutting off without any notice, sometimes for days at a time?
Why does everyone seem to have gotten sicker since Meta showed up?
In West Memphis, Arkansas, Alphabet’s Google has started construction on what state officials are calling the largest private capital investment in state history, a multibillion dollar campus on 1,100 acres of scrubland.
In South Memphis, Tennessee, Elon Musk converted a vacant Electrolux factory into his Colossus supercomputer in just 122 days. He is now building a second, larger version targeting a million GPUs, has acquired a third building to expand further, and purchased a former Duke Energy power plant to keep it all running.
Microsoft has invested more than $7 billion in its data centers in Racine County, Wisconsin.
“In the heart of the American Midwest, a modern marvel is rising,” Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in a statement. “We’re in the final phases of building the world’s most powerful AI datacenter in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin—part of a region forged by generations of hard work and ingenuity.”
Meanwhile, environmental groups are pursuing legal action and policy advocacy.
“Transparency cannot depend on a company’s goodwill or public relations strategy, according to a 2026 statement released by the org. “Rather, transparency is foundational to democratic decision-making and community trust, especially for projects with environmental impacts as significant as large-scale data centers. These facilities will place enormous demands on our water supplies, electricity grids, and local infrastructure. Communities have a right to full, timely, and meaningful information before decisions are made—not after deals are signed behind closed doors.”
In rural Indiana near the banks of Lake Michigan, Amazon has transformed 1,200 acres of farmland into an $11 billion facility called Project Rainier.
Hundreds of data centers are already operating in Texas with hundreds more on the way. Concerns about water consumption at these facilities is rising as the state stares down a major water shortage due to prolonged drought, population growth and industrial demand that outpace existing supplies. Texas will need at least $174 billion in the next 50 years to avoid a major water crisis, according to a new state analysis.
I could go on, and on, and on. Read more here.
U.S. data centers also consumed more than 4 percent of total U.S. electricity in 2023, according to the MIT Energy Initiative. That number could more than double to 9 percent by 2030, the research group projects. A single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as 50,000 homes.
Meet the Messengers
As residents across the country have begun pushing back, they’ve started encountering a well-funded counter-effort, and it’s worth knowing who is behind it.
NetChoice is a Washington, D.C.-based trade association whose members include some of the biggest names in the tech sector: Amazon, Google, Meta, and others. It’s funded primarily through membership dues and sponsorships paid by those same corporations.
The association’s stated mission is to promote free enterprise and free expression online. NetChoice lobbies against regulations its corporate members find inconvenient, litigates against state laws those members oppose, and runs public campaigns designed to shape how communities and lawmakers think about technology policy.
One of those campaigns is called “Data Centers Help Local Communities.” Maybe you’ve seen an ad on YouTube? It promotes the economic benefits of data centers and encourages states to offer tax exemptions to attract them.
The messaging emphasizes job creation, tax revenue, and broadband expansion. It does not emphasize community consent, environmental impact, or the right of residents to know what is being built next door before the permits are signed.
This effort is not put out by an independent research organization or a neutral policy group. It’s an industry lobby funded by the very companies building these facilities, running ads and campaigns designed to smooth the path for their members’ projects.
When you see messaging about how data centers are good for your town, it’s worth asking: who paid for that message, and what are they selling?
The economic arguments NetChoice makes are not fabricated. Data centers do create some jobs. They can generate tax revenue. In places like Loudoun County, Virginia, that revenue has been genuinely significant. But an industry lobby will always lead with the benefits and bury the costs.
It will not tell you about the strain on your power grid, the draw on your water supply, the noise that doesn’t stop, or the back-door deals your local officials may have already signed before you heard a word about it.
Communities Are Pushing Back —> & Winning
The good news is that when communities organize and show up, conditions can change.
In Monroe Township, New Jersey, residents began packing planning board meetings after discovering a proposed 1 million-square-foot data center and 522,000-square-foot warehouse on 172 acres of vacant farmland.
People raised concerns about electricity consumption, water usage, and noise. Officials heard them.
By April, Monroe Township passed ordinances banning data centers entirely. When developer Hexa Builders’ application was subsequently denied as incomplete, the ban took full effect. You can read the Mayor’s full statement about it here.
Monroe Township is not alone. Pemberton Township in Burlington County passed what advocates say was New Jersey’s first municipal data center ban in February.
Advocates are now pushing for a state moratorium on new data centers.
Kassi Solberg a mom in rural Montana made national headlines taking on a proposed 5,000-acre AI data center near her property. At a recent town hall meeting, she asked if anyone on the town council had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the developer that would keep them silent about the project.
The mayor replied that the council wasn’t obliged to answer the public’s questions at the town meetings, according to what the town’s lawyer had told him.
“I think they count on us being dumb country people and us not pushing back,” she told The New York Times. “But by the time you figure out what these companies are planning to do, they’ve got the data centers built already.”
In Utah, Kevin O’Leary’s massive proposed facility is facing mounting community opposition.
The pattern is consistent. When communities are informed and organized, they can change the conversation. They can take action.
What Transparency Looks Like
I want to be clear. I’m not making a blanket argument against data centers or against the technology they support. Some communities have welcomed these facilities after genuine public engagement, honest disclosure of impacts, and real negotiation of community benefits. When that happens, that’s democracy working the way it should.
What is not acceptable is the pattern our map documents: projects announced after permits are already secured, developers who don’t return calls, local officials who signed NDAs before their neighbors knew a project was being considered.
A company can be planning something the size of lower Manhattan in your county, drawing more electricity than a major American city, backed by hundreds of billions in borrowed money, and the people who live there may have no idea it’s coming until the trucks arrive.
Transparency means notifying residents before decisions are made, not after. It means public hearings with real, complete information about energy consumption, water use, noise levels, and effects on local infrastructure. It means elected officials who answer to their constituents first, not to the corporations seeking tax breaks and zoning variances.
When a company the size of Meta or Amazon wants to put a billion-dollar facility in a town of less than 20,000 people, give the people who live there a seat at the table. It’s that simple.
What You Can Do
The map at BrockovichDataCenter.com exists because of you. Every pin represents a real person who refused to be silent. A new feature where you can upload photos and videos is coming soon, which means the documentation will only get stronger. Get your phones out and start showing us what your water looks like, what your neighborhood sounds like, or any other visual changes in your neighborhood.
If there is a data center issue in your community, report it.
Attend your local planning board meetings. Ask your elected officials what they knew and when they knew it. Ask whether any NDAs were signed. Ask for the full environmental and energy impact assessments, and if they don’t exist, ask why not.
The race to build AI infrastructure is unfolding town by town across this country. In some places, it is welcomed. In others, it is being forced through the back door.
The difference, in almost every case, comes down to whether the community was informed, whether they organized, and whether they showed up.
To all of you who have already submitted, thank you! Keep it coming.
Note: We have about 4,000 data centers operating in the U.S., many built before the AI boom. The map isn't intended to show every data center. It's focused on locations where community members are actively voicing concerns.
Report your AI data center concerns and view the full map at brockovichdatacenter.com.
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And ask if AI is so great why hasn’t it designed resource efficient data centers?
And ask what the data centers are actually doing. Bitcoin mining, anyone?
Is anyone else thinking these centers aren't strictly for AI infrastructure, but for surveillance? All the data collected by all of America's Flock cameras, traffic cameras, future CBDC endeavors, etc., has to be collected, collated, and disseminated from somewhere, right?