From Arizona to Mississippi, data centers are sprouting up at an unprecedented rate across the country, with nearly 1,500 in development.
Many of these projects have been shrouded in secrecy. As community members have become aware of their size, and their massive consumption of water and electricity, they’ve begun to show up at city council meetings and mobilize their communities to stop their construction. So far, $64 billion worth of data centers have been terminated as a result of community organizing, according to Data Center Watch, a research firm tracking data center opposition
While the opposition has been bipartisan — a Gallup poll from March found 7 in 10 Americans opposed data center construction in their communities — the pushback is gendered: over half of women lodge significant opposition to the proposals, and are more likely than men to express the most resistance. Significantly less women than men say they support building more data centers in the country, according to a Politico survey from February. Other surveys have shown that women are more worried about the environmental impact than men and are also more concerned about AI, the technology these data centers are being built to support. Women are also disproportionately impacted by the rising electricity costs spurred by these energy guzzling operations.
On both a local and national level, women are stepping up against these centers, either fueled by their concern for their children’s health, their quality of life, the impact of AI technology, or the related pollution that accompanies the power plants being built to fuel these sprawling facilities.
The 19th interviewed three women from across the country who are fighting to protect their communities in different ways: one is running for office to unseat data center-friendly councilmembers in her rural community, another is developing an environmental-justice centered strategy to help communities of color fight back in the South, and a third is an urban planner crafting policies to empower local decision-making.
Abre’ Conner: Advocate for environmental justice
The NAACP sued Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI in April over its use of methane gas turbines to power a data center in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. For Abre’ Conner, director of the NAACP’s Center for Environment and Climate Justice, the lawsuit was a necessary escalation. Memphis was a turning point for communities of color who have been fighting for environmental justice and safety.
She knew they needed to act quickly. The company they were up against, xAI, was fast-tracking the process. She and the NAACP began preparing for the lawsuit last summer, announcing their intent in June 2025. What she didn’t anticipate was the outpouring of requests that would follow.
“The number of emails I was getting on a daily basis was just a lot, to say the least. People across the country were saying, ‘We heard about a data center in our community and we weren’t really sure what to do. How should we move forward?'” Conner said.
It became clear that data centers were affecting marginalized communities across the country. Realizing they lacked a unified framework, Conner and the NAACP decided to build one. The NAACP’s Frontline Framework, which included work with community members, regional advocates and national organizers, drew inspiration from the 17 environmental justice principles established by leaders of color in 1991. Conner believes it is the first environmental-justice-centered framework specifically focused on data center fights.
“A lot of people felt energized by knowing that there were other people across the country who were standing with them, and they weren’t alone,” said Conner.
Leaders saw a familiar pattern: Data centers were being sited in communities that already had significant industrial footprints, places like Bessemer, Alabama; Clarksdale, Mississippi; and, of course, Memphis. These communities tended to share two other characteristics: a history of disinvestment and a significant Black population.
“We were able to see very early on the patterns of what that kind of industrial build-out has meant in other spaces,” Conner said. “When it came to fracking or crypto mining, there was a certain narrative pushed very early about an innovative solution that was going to fix all our problems. What we were able to do early on was push back on that narrative and ask questions. Now we are having a moment where people who may have experienced that kind of industrial build-out in the past are seeing this as a moment to do something different.”
Front of mind for Conner are the health consequences of data centers, an issue close to her heart. It wasn’t until she was in college that she connected her childhood use of an albuterol inhaler to the phosphate plants near her hometown in central Florida. Today, she worries that similar dots are going unconnected in communities near data centers.
Conner points first to air quality, noting that diesel backup generators are an often-overlooked source of community air pollution, on top of emissions from data center operations. Water is the other major concern — and in communities where infrastructure has long been neglected, the burden of a data center’s demand could prove catastrophic.
“Imagine a water treatment plant that already needs an upgrade now having to service a data center using hundreds of millions of gallons of water. That creates more strain on aging infrastructure. And when people think about water infrastructure, they may only think about one part, but there are many different pieces, including water recycling. All of those components are going to be impacted,” Conner said.
Despite facing opponents with vast resources and political influence, Conner remains hopeful that communities working together can create real change.
“People power is still on our side. I don’t think many of these companies, or some folks in elected roles, thought they were going to face as much opposition as they’re facing,” Conner said. “We are seeing more people than ever talking about environmental and climate justice issues, and that is really encouraging.”
Maia Woluchem: Urban planner centering communities
Technology is about more than just screens and machines. The reality, Maia Woluchem said, is that technology is in neighborhoods and backyards.
Woluchem directs the Trustworthy Infrastructures team at Data & Society, a technology policy think tank. For the past two years, her team has been studying how investment in artificial intelligence is changing the landscape of Pennsylvania.
Data centers are advertised as infusions of cash for struggling municipalities. Many towns across the state have fallen on hard economic times as demand for steel and coal has declined.
“Over the course of this year, we saw many of Penn State satellite campuses fold. We saw disinvestment for many of the public hospital systems. Philly had [public transit] turned off for many months on end because of a budget crisis,” Woluchem said. “There’s a fiscal crisis in the state of Pennsylvania and instead of finding other ways to bolster that kind of public infrastructure, we’re relying on the private sector to instead answer those questions for us.”
When politicians and private companies come to the Keystone State, Woluchem said they pull on narratives of de-industrialization and nationalism, comparing the competitive edge of having a data center to the Manhattan Project in the nuclear arms race, or citing the need to “beat China.” By calling AI a necessity for national security, Pennsylvanians are once again being told their labor is vital to the country.
Poor policy decisions as well as employment shifts lead to a weaker tax base to support public utilities. When companies like Amazon tout a $20 billion investment into a struggling state, not every city is in a position to turn it down.
But not everyone is on board to accept these investments, either. In places like Archbald, population 7,300, Woluchem saw sign after sign on the northeastern Pennsylvania roads protesting the rapid expansion of data centers. There’s division even in a place that would see significant economic boosts from private energy projects.
Woluchem said the politics of people for or against data centers can’t be easily distilled into red or blue. Each coalition is bipartisan: Someone might be against the new data center because it could lower the value of their house, while someone else could be sick of the tech bros in general.
Much of the pushback against data centers across the country takes place in city council meetings. Woluchem’s work empowers localities to actively participate in the restructuring of their lives. She co-authored a policy brief exploring the Pennsylvania data center boom, urging protections for municipal power because “bypassing local governance and accountability harms communities.”
Woluchem became interested in urban planning through a college class on the economics of race. She learned about the organization of people on land, and how forces like segregation shaped cities. She also saw how urban planning could be a tool for policymakers to improve some of those structures. Now, as debates over data centers ramp up, she wants to center community power in the debates over the shaping of public terrain.
“Communities should be at the forefront of these decisions,” Woluchem said. “They are going to be the ones living amongst them.”
Jackie McGuire: Concerned citizen turned politician
Jackie McGuire is an AI and cyber security professional. So when she learned last fall that a data center was being proposed in her rural Southern Arizona community, she wasn’t necessarily against the plan. In fact, she reached out to Marana town council members to learn more and offer her expertise.
When she didn’t hear back, McGuire began to look into the project and grew worried when she learned about the involvement of Beale Infrastructure, a San Francisco-based data center developer that would lease the space. Unlike data centers built by Meta or Amazon, “if the AI bubble pops, or even just contracts, this will be the first thing that gets abandoned, because it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to break a lease on a building than to try to sell a building you already own,” she said.
McGuire also worried that the data center would contribute to rising electricity rates and water consumption in a state that will likely see significant cuts to its share of the Colorado River. And she was concerned about both noise and air pollution that have been associated with data centers in other towns.
A Beale spokesperson told The 19th that the center is utilizing a closed loop cooling system that dramatically reduces water use, is paying for its electricity infrastructure to protect ratepayers and is meeting noise and pollution controls set by the city.
But McGuire is still skeptical that these projects will pan out the way the developer says they will. In nearby Tucson, McGuire saw how residents were kept in the dark over a different data center proposed by Beale that required officials to sign a non-disclosure agreement that prevented them from discussing the details of the project with residents.
To make her concerns heard, McGuire showed up to a planning and zoning meeting in December where she went viral on social media for speaking out about the project that required the rezoning of 600 acres for the development.
In that moment, she became the face of the anti-data center movement in Marana, where she’s lived for 15 years. “I went to bed with like 100 Instagram followers on my business account. I woke up with like 5,000 and now I have almost 8,000 Instagram followers because of this whole fight,” she said.
In February, she helped gather almost 3,000 signatures from area Marana residents that would put the data center approval up for a vote. That referendum has since been rejected by the city on a technicality, a decision McGuire is challenging in court. She’s also fighting a piece of state legislation that would invalidate her referendum if passed.
Tired of trying to push for change as a concerned resident, McGuire filed paperwork in late February to run for city council.
McGuire and two other women in Marana are part of a growing number of first-time candidates pursuing local elected office to disrupt construction of data centers. The Working Families Party said in December that it was recruiting local candidates throughout the nation who would join this fight. So far, 40 percent of the applicants are women, a spokesperson told The 19th.
As data center proposals continue to pop up in overwhelmingly rural areas, McGuire worries small town governments are easy targets for potentially bad business deals. She wants a pause on development until it’s clear what the potential pros and cons will be.
“I am not anti-growth, I’m not anti-AI. I’m not anti-data center, I am pro governments having enough knowledge from impartial, unbiased third parties to make informed decisions about their town,” she said. “When you see Bernie [Sanders] and [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] arguing for a national moratorium. It’s basically like, ‘we don’t know what we don’t know,’ right? It’s not a bad thing to pump the brakes,” she added.
