Every one of these projects gets pitched like a gift.
A win for economic development. A vote for the future. A necessary piece of digital infrastructure in the age of AI. And maybe some of that is true. I’m not writing this as somebody who thinks compute does not matter, or that the country can just opt out of the next era of infrastructure because the politics are getting uncomfortable. The buildout is real. The need is real. The market is clearly telling us that.
What I am saying is that the sales pitch starts sounding different when you’re the one expected to live with the consequences.
Because if you are the resident sitting in the county meeting, hearing polished language about innovation and competitiveness while nobody gives you a straight answer on power draw, water use, tax incentives, long-term jobs, or what happens to your community after the ribbon cutting, it starts to feel less like progress and more like a lopsided extraction deal with cleaner branding.
That is the part the industry still does not seem to fully grasp. People are not just reacting to a building. They are reacting to the terms.
This Is Not a Small Buildout Anymore
This is not a handful of server farms tucked behind a few substations. This is a national build wave.
Cushman & Wakefield says the Americas had 25.3 gigawatts of datacenter capacity under construction at the end of 2025, with 93.6% of existing operational capacity in the United States. JLL says North America had more than 35 gigawatts under construction, and 64% of that pipeline is now in frontier markets rather than the old core hubs. In other words, this thing is not only growing, it is spreading outward into places that were not historically at the center of this fight.
That matters, in the grander scheme of things, because once the expansion leaves the obvious hyperscale corridors and starts moving into smaller markets, rural markets, and politically-softer markets, the friction changes. The communities being asked to host this infrastructure are often the same communities now being told to trust that the upside will trickle back to them somehow, eventually, in some form that always sounds better in a presentation than it does in real life.
This is not a niche tech story anymore. It is a land story, a water story, a power story, and increasingly a political story.
People Aren’t Revolting for No Reason
The easiest way to dismiss opposition is to call it NIMBY-ism and move on. That word does a lot of work for people who do not want to answer hard questions. But once you look at the pattern, that frame starts to fall apart.
Data Center Watch says $64 billion in U.S. datacenter projects have been blocked or delayed amid local opposition, and identifies 142 advocacy groups in 24 states organizing against projects or pushing for tighter regulation. Uptime Intelligence says public opposition was tied to 2 U.S. project cancellations in 2023, 6 in 2024, and 25 in 2025, with more already canceled or unlikely to proceed in 2026. Even if you argue over the exact counts, the trend is obvious that resistance is not isolated anymore. It is organized, bipartisan, and growing.
As one example, Maine just put an even sharper point on it. Reuters reported on April 14 that Maine’s legislature approved the first statewide moratorium in the country on new large datacenters over 20 megawatts through October 2027 while the state studies impacts on the grid, electricity bills, air, and water. Reuters also reported that 11 other states are considering similar action. That is not fringe behavior. That is what happens when officials realize the old “approve it now, explain it later” model is becoming politically radioactive.
So no, people are not revolting for no reason.
They are revolting because they are finally being asked to absorb the permanent burden of projects whose benefits are often described in sweeping national language and delivered in very selective local terms.
The Faustian Bargain
This is the part I keep coming back to. Not because technology is evil. Not because AI is the devil. That’s lazy and unserious. The problem is not advancement. The problem is the structure of the deal.
A Faustian bargain is not just a bad trade. It is a seductive one. It is a deal where the promised upside is shiny enough that people stop asking what is being surrendered, who is surrendering it, and whether the exchange was ever honestly priced.
That maps pretty cleanly onto what a lot of towns are being asked to accept right now.
Give up land.
Give up water.
Give up grid headroom.
Give up tax leverage.
Give up a degree of local control.
Accept noise, transmission upgrades, industrialization, political pressure, and a future where your community is expected to host infrastructure that mostly serves somebody else’s scale. In return, you get a burst of short-term construction activity, a carefully managed jobs narrative, and a lecture about how this is the price of staying relevant in the digital age and putting some small Midwestern farming community back on the map.
Brookings put the jobs problem in unusually plain language:
…the standard datacenter development model has produced mostly short-term construction jobs and relatively little long-term, high-value tech activity or large-scale employment in most places. That does not mean there are no benefits. It means the long-term local return is often much thinner than the public ask.
That is the lopsidedness people feel in their gut, even if they do not have a policy term for it. The burden feels increasingly local. The upside feels distant. The glossy brochure bit is immediate.
The fine print shows up later.
Power, Water, and Land Are Not Infinite
The power grid is where this conversation stops being abstract.
DOE says datacenters consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and could rise to roughly 6.7% to 12% by 2028. DOE’s electricity-demand resource hub says rising demand is being driven in large part by datacenter expansion and AI. That means America is not dealing with a side issue here. It is dealing with a major new load story that is colliding with generation constraints, transmission bottlenecks, and all the usual political dishonesty around who pays for what.
And this is why people should be asking every uncomfortable question they can think of.
What happens to ordinary ratepayers?
What happens when water gets tight?
What gets delayed or repriced elsewhere on the grid?
How much of the infrastructure upgrade bill gets socialized while the private upside stays private?
That is also why the nuclear conversation belongs here, but only if we talk about it like adults. Nuclear of today matters because this demand is arriving now, and existing firm generation already on the grid becomes more valuable when giant new loads start stacking up. Nuclear of tomorrow matters because the country will likely need more serious around-the-clock power if this buildout continues. DOE has reissued a $900 million Gen III+ SMR (“small modular reactor”) solicitation to support deployment. That is certainly important and relevant here. But future SMRs are not a 2026 hall pass for weak scrutiny, rushed siting, or pretending today’s resource grab is somehow solved by tomorrow’s technology roadmap.
And no, the answer is not to go hunting for politically easier sacrifice zones.
The U.S. Army announced in March that it had conditionally selected companies to negotiate commercial hyperscale datacenter development on Army installations under its Enhanced Use Lease program. DOE is also leasing federal land at the Portsmouth site in Ohio for a massive AI datacenter project. Once you see that pattern, you can’t unsee it. If local communities push back, just find more land under some other banner and label it “strategic.”
I think that instinct is entirely wrong.
Public land should not become the pressure-release valve for private compute expansion. BLM land should not become the next patch of map people circle when counties stop rolling over. And tribal land should never be treated as some politically convenient place to externalize burden under the language of “partnership.” The answer to backlash cannot be, “Fine, let’s just go find somebody else’s land to burn through.” The answer has to be a better deal, a more honest process, and a much higher standard. I say this as a resident of Nevada, with a higher percentage of BLM land and the highest percentage of Federal land, when compared to any other state.
The Line in the Sand
At some point, this has to stop being a conversation where ordinary people are told to sit down, trust the experts, and be grateful that hyperscale showed up in their zip code.
No. Ask every single question. Because you may not get a chance to again.
Ask about the water.
Ask about the megawatts.
Ask about the tax incentives.
Ask about the permanent jobs.
Ask about the transmission upgrades.
Ask about the ratepayer exposure.
Ask about the land use, the noise, the cooling, the public process, and who exactly is supposed to benefit after the construction crews leave.
And if the answers are vague, slippery, or wrapped in strategic buzzwords, then locals should keep fighting.
They should slow bad deals down. They should challenge bad approvals. Force hearings, force disclosures, force plain-English accounting, and force politicians to say out loud what exactly they are giving away and to whom. That is not obstruction. That is citizenship.
And let’s be very clear about one more thing. The people waving these deals through are not above you. Your city council is elected. Your county commissioners are elected. Your mayor is elected. Your state legislators are elected. Your governor is elected. Your federal officials are elected. In many communities, even the smaller boards and neighborhood bodies shaping local outcomes exist to represent residents, not posture over them like minor royalty.
They were put there to represent you and the publicly declared interests of the communities that elected them.
That is the job. That is why it’s referred to as “public service.”
So when they stop doing that, call them on it. In public. On the record. At the microphone. In the local paper. In the next election cycle. Make them explain why your water, your power, your land use, your tax posture, and your long-term community health are worth trading away for a deal they cannot defend in plain English. Representation is not a blank check. Public office is not a license to line your pockets, manage the public like a nuisance, or sell off pieces of a town and call it progress afterward.
Local governments need to stop behaving like every hyperscale proposal is a magic economic-development coupon. State governments need to stop subsidizing long-term civic damage for short-term ribbon cuttings. Federal officials need to stop looking at public land as a convenient overflow lot for private compute demand. And the industry needs to understand that if it wants to call this infrastructure essential, then the public gets to demand essential-level scrutiny, essential-level accountability, and essential-level community benefit in return.
That is the line in the sand.
No more quiet deals. No more treating towns like consumable inputs. No more asking communities to surrender land, water, power, and political trust in exchange for a future somebody else profits from first.
I’m not against the future. I’m against pretending this version of it is free. The decisions being made right now, in county meetings and state legislatures and federal leasing offices, are not temporary. Infrastructure built on bad terms becomes a permanent fixture. The Industrial Revolution didn’t come with a rewind button, and neither will this one.
If the AI age really needs this much physical infrastructure, then fine. Make the case honestly. Price it honestly. Negotiate it honestly. But until that happens, people have every right to resist a Faustian bargain dressed up as progress.
And they should.
/Nick
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are communities opposing datacenter construction?
Local opposition is growing because communities are being asked to absorb significant burdens — increased power demand, water usage, land conversion, and tax incentives — while long-term economic benefits often fail to materialize at the local level. Over $64 billion in U.S. datacenter projects have been blocked or delayed due to local opposition, with organized advocacy groups now active in 24 states.
What is Maine’s datacenter moratorium?
In April 2026, Maine’s legislature approved the first statewide moratorium in the U.S. on new large datacenters over 20 megawatts, effective through October 2027, while the state studies grid, water, air, and electricity rate impacts. At least 11 other states are considering similar legislation.
How much electricity do datacenters use in the United States?
According to the DOE, U.S. datacenters consumed approximately 4.4% of total national electricity in 2023, with projections rising to between 6.7% and 12% by 2028, driven largely by AI workload expansion.
Do datacenters create long-term local jobs?
Research from the Brookings Institution found that the standard datacenter development model produces mostly short-term construction jobs, with relatively little long-term, high-value tech employment in most host communities.
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