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The Small-Town Revolt Against Big Tech

Rural communities are leading the charge against AI data centers.

When a data center developer offered a northern Kentucky family $26 million for half of their 1,200-acre farm, the response was a hard no. “Stay and feed the nation,” said Delsia Bare. “$26 million doesn’t mean anything.”

There are currently 4320 data centers across all fifty states, with some of the densest clusters in Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, California, and Georgia. But even though all of America is being affected, two-thirds of future data centers are slated for rural areas.

Until recently, data centers were modest in scale, not that different from any light industrial campus. But the exponential growth of AI is driving demand for “hyperscale” facilities with backup diesel generators and, in some cases, on-site power generation.

Lax zoning has allowed these hyperscale centers to be built in agricultural and residential areas and adjacent to hiking trails, posing threats to wildlife and noise and light pollution nuisances for residents. In the west, data centers’ heavy water usage compounds our dire water shortage. And, in case electricity bills weren’t already high enough, data centers’ energy use is sending them through the roof.

The scale of that electricity consumption is astonishing. It already surpasses that of all of Pakistan and is predicted to double by 2030, resulting in rising rates for households and small businesses. Between 2013 and 2023, electricity consumption in Oregon rose 20 percent, driven largely, if not entirely, by the rapid influx of data centers. Portland General Electric raised residential rates by 50 percent to pay for the new infrastructure needed to keep up with increased demand. Things got so bad that, last year, Oregon became one of only four states to require data centers to absorb rising utility costs.

And it’s not just Oregon. Georgians got hit with a 24 percent electricity rate increase in 2024, according to Patty Durand, founder of Georgians for Affordable Energy. In Mansfield, Georgia, Beverly Morris, who lives 400 yards from a data center, saw her monthly electric bill shoot up by $150. “Every month, it’s a struggle,” she told More Perfect Union. “[The data centers] should have to pay for that difference. It’s hard enough for a regular person to pay their electric bill as it is. I don’t think that’s right at all.”

In response to vehement opposition, on May 27, La Pine, Oregon’s city council unanimously nixed the sale of public land to a developer called Boxminer. City and county residents showed up en masse at council meetings (the mayor characterized it as a “pitchforked riot”) to voice concerns about energy and water use and the irritating 24/7 humming noise they’d heard recordings of from........

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