A few years after her husband died, Sandie Slowey moved from Pennsylvania to a mobile home in Hernando, a small town in rural Citrus County, Florida, known for its open green spaces and pristine spring waters. Down the road from her home was a horse ranch, and Slowey enjoyed the serenity of her quiet retirement from her job as a nurse—strolling on lush walking trails and sitting outside in the afternoons to hear the birds sing. On chilly evenings, she sleeps with her windows open.

In February, on Valentine’s Day, a neighbor told Slowey that the Deltona Corporation, a Florida real estate developer, planned to construct an 800-acre data center next to their neighborhood. Then in March, Slowey noticed the horses were gone. When she checked tax records, she discovered that Deltona had bought the property. It also bought another lot next door.

Slowey was outraged. Friends back in Pennsylvania, who now live near data centers, had warned her about the constant noise, and she worried that the incessant humming would pierce through the thin walls of her home. As one among dozens of residents who spoke up against the project, she said as much at a county planning and development commission meeting in March. She joined with other residents and decided to form No Data Center Citrus and organized a community meeting that attracted many residents, some of whom voiced their concerns at commission meetings. Their efforts worked. “We had two overflow rooms full, and they had to stop people at the door because there was no room,” Slowey recalled. County officials ultimately rejected Deltona’s proposal and approved a one-year moratorium on any data center projects.

The fight in Citrus County against data centers has played out in dozens of communities across Florida, and as residents in rural areas—already fed up with the encroachment of new development that has infiltrated much of the state in the last few years as its population has grown—feel threatened by the explosion of data center construction. As my colleague Sophie Hurwitz reported in May, there are at least 268 local opposition groups across 37 states. The local........

© Mother Jones