Data center boom sparks rare bipartisan backlash as rural communities demand transparency

The pitch came to Hood County, Texas, a year ago with grand promises and almost no specifics. A company wanted to build something big, create jobs, be a good neighbor, upgrade the community. What it wouldn't do was explain what it actually wanted to do. Dave Eagle, one of five elected officials on the county commissioners' court, felt the approach was condescending—as if the developers thought they were dealing with people who could be dazzled without substance. The company turned out to be Amazon Web Services, and what it wanted was up to 90% in property tax rebates for 30 years. Eagle voted no. The project moved to the next county over, where AWS got the tax break it sought.

What's happening in Hood County is happening across rural America at an accelerating pace. There are already more than 3,000 data centers operating in the United States, with another 1,500 in the planning stages. Most existing facilities sit in cities, but 67% of the ones being proposed are headed for rural areas. The boom is driven by artificial intelligence. Two years ago, a large data center might have consumed five megawatts of power. A new AI data center can demand 1,000 megawatts—200 times larger. Tech giants including Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are expected to spend $1.5 trillion building these facilities through next year, according to Wall Street estimates. Michael Webber, a professor at the University of Texas who advises tech companies on Texas projects, describes the scale shift as fundamental. Some experts believe construction will eventually level off as demand reaches saturation. Others argue that the appetite for computing power will never be satisfied, that the race to develop artificial general intelligence—systems that could match or exceed human capabilities—will keep driving expansion indefinitely.

The stakes feel real to people living near proposed sites. Jazmin Villegas, a Texas mother of five and Marine veteran, learned about a planned data center campus next to her family home, where she raises goats, horses, chickens, turkeys, and honeybees. She framed her opposition in terms of her military oath to protect and defend the Constitution. She's uncertain whether data centers qualify as an enemy, but she wants answers about how they'll affect her community—specifically about water, air, and noise pollution and their health consequences. In Chandler, Arizona, residents already anxious about water supply pushed back when the city council considered a data center proposal. A CBS News analysis found that golf courses nationwide consume more than twice as much water as data centers, yet the concern persists. In Northern Virginia, home to the world's highest concentration of data centers, electricity bills have surged in the past year, driven at least partly by the power demands of these facilities.

The political response is unusual. Texas Governor Greg Abbott was enthusiastically pro-data center, welcoming Google investment and calling Texas the "centerpiece for AI data centers for Google in the entire world." But last month he paused approval of new data centers drawing from the state's power grid pending completion of an audit. His office stated that data centers would not connect to the Texas grid until they met his requirements: paying for their own electricity infrastructure, not taking water needed by communities, not taking power needed by families, not disrupting neighborhoods, and not raising costs for residential customers. The Democrat running against Abbott in November, Gina Hinojosa, has made data centers a central campaign issue and is calling for a temporary moratorium.

What's striking is the bipartisan nature of the opposition. More than 60% of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all say they don't want a data center where they live, according to Gallup polling. Dave Lowe, a lifelong conservative Republican living near a proposed 800-acre data center campus in Red Oak, Texas, said this is the first time in his adult life an issue has made him consider voting differently. He's decided he'll vote for whichever candidate is willing to speak up and take action on data centers, regardless of party. In Red Oak, dozens of residents across the political spectrum meet twice a month to discuss how to stop Compass Datacenters from building ten two-story facilities on agricultural land the size of Manhattan's Central Park. If completed, this would be just one of seven campuses that would cover more than a quarter of the entire town. Compass said in a statement that it had worked closely with the community for five years and incorporated their feedback into projects, though the company and local officials declined interview requests. The tension between economic development and community control—between the national race for AI dominance and the daily lives of people in rural counties—shows no sign of resolving.