00:00In Virginia, the heart of the world's data center industry, a county board just did something that
00:06almost never happens. It unanimously killed one of the largest data center proposals in American
00:12history. And on the very same day, from Florida to Texas to Indiana, communities pushed back on
00:20every front while the industry answered with nuclear reactors and a $19 billion bet on a tiny
00:27Kentucky river town. The fight over AI's building boom has never been sharper. We begin in Prince
00:35William County, Virginia, in the shadow of the data center capital of the world, where supervisors
00:42just did something that almost never happens. After a public hearing that stretched five hours,
00:49with roughly 100 protesters rallying outside and 95 speakers lining up inside, the board voted eight
00:57to nothing to deny the Dulles South Innovation Center. The plan would have rewritten the county's
01:03long-range map for 252 parcels, nearly 2,000 acres of farm and forest land, clearing the way for up
01:12to
01:1243 million square feet of data centers along the Loudoun County border. County planning staff had
01:19urged denial, citing inadequate roads, water and sewer capacity, and the loss of rural character.
01:27Board Chair Dechandra Jefferson put it simply, planning the county's future is too important to be a
01:34political issue. That same defiant mood is spreading south to Lakeland, Florida, where a proposed
01:43hyperscale project called Project Swan has pushed the city toward a one-year
01:48moratorium on any data center or industrial facility demanding 50 megawatts or more.
01:55On Monday, residents and the developer faced off in front of city commissioners.
02:00Christy Poma, who lives near the site and manages a heart and lung condition,
02:06said she fears breathing emissions from the facility's diesel backup generators.
02:12Ryan Company's Tyler Lohmiller countered that the 600,000 square foot facility
02:17would be a cloud data center, not AI, and would use water only for ordinary building needs.
02:25But Mayor Sarah Roberts McCarley noted the city's largest power user today draws just 18 megawatts.
02:33Project Swan would need roughly 100. A final vote is set for August 3rd.
02:40In Texas, the fight is over money. Bell County residents packed the commissioner's court on
02:47Tuesday demanding an end to tax abatements. For data centers altogether, farmer Alton Fowler told
02:54commissioners the companies are, quote, already ahead the moment they receive breaks they otherwise
03:00would not get. Resident Joe Royer questioned why the county granted Meta's Temple facility its own
03:07abatement on top of one the city had already approved. Commissioners pushed back, noting that
03:14without zoning authority outside city limits, an abatement is one of the few tools they have to
03:20impose noise limits. Water use rules or diesel generator bans on a project. They stopped short of
03:28ending the incentives, but agreed the current policy needs revision. Scheduling workshops through
03:35mid-August and adoption of an amended policy by September 8th. Zoom out, and the resistance is
03:43no longer town by town. It is statewide. In Indiana, researchers at Indiana University's Environmental
03:51Resilience Institute have tallied the numbers. Eleven counties have passed data center ordinances.
03:57At least 17 have enacted temporary moratoriums. And two, Marshall and Cass counties have banned new
04:06data centers outright. Add it all up, and nearly a third of the state's 92 counties have moved to
04:13restrict the industry. Halfway through the year, even the state capital is wrestling with it.
04:20Indianapolis's Metropolitan Development Commission voted 5-3 on July 1 to advance new
04:26zoning rules over residents who asked for a full pause on approvals instead. And in New Albany,
04:34a one-year moratorium on facilities over 100,000 square feet heads to a final vote on
04:40July 16. All of that local turbulence has finally reached Washington. The Federal Energy Regulatory
04:49Commission has ordered all six of the nation's regional grid operators, PJM, MISO, the Southwest
04:57Power Pool, California's ISO, ISO New England, and the New York ISO, to justify or rewrite the rules for
05:06connecting data centers and other giant loads to the grid. The show cause orders, issued under Section 206 of
05:15the Federal Power Act, come with hard deadlines. Reports on generation adequacy are due July 20th,
05:22and full responses by August 17th. Regulators want answers on preventing cost shifting to ordinary
05:29ratepayers, accommodating co-located and behind-the-meter generation, and creating new services for
05:37flexible loads. It is the most aggressive federal intervention yet in the collision between AI and
05:43the American power grid. And the industry's answer to both the power problem and the water problem
05:51may have just gone critical, literally. In the Utah desert, nuclear startup Valar Atomics wired its
05:59Ward 250 microreactor to an NVIDIA Blackwell desktop, and powered it live on stage. The first time a startup's
06:08nuclear reactor has produced usable electricity in American history. The helium-cooled reactor reached
06:16criticality on June 18th. Now Valar and NVIDIA are exploring a 30-megawatt closed-loop AI factory in
06:23Orangeville that would run entirely behind the meter and drink almost no local water. NVIDIA says its new
06:31facility design cuts cooling water from roughly 2.6 million gallons per megawatt each year to near
06:39zero. Valar has raised $450 million at a $2 billion valuation to make it real. State legislators are
06:50watching all of this. And in New York, the pressure on the governor is mounting by the day. Albany's Common
06:57Council voted 12-0 Monday night to formally back the state's proposed one-year moratorium on new data
07:05centers. After demonstrators rallied outside City Hall, the bill, the Responsible Data Center Development
07:13Act, has already cleared both chambers, passing the Senate 44-16 and the Assembly 102-39. All that stands
07:23between New York and the nation's first statewide data center moratorium is Governor Kathy Hochul's
07:30signature. And she has yet to say which way she is leaning. City officials say no formal data center
07:37proposal has even been submitted in Albany. Only rumors. And that is exactly why they want statewide rules
07:45first the capital city just told its governor. Loudly. What it wants. Yet while governments
07:53hesitate, the money keeps moving. And it just landed hard on a small Kentucky river town. Tara Wolfe
08:01announced a 20-year lease with AI developer Anthropic at its Justified Data Campus in
08:07Haasville. A deal expected to generate roughly $19 billion in contracted revenue over the initial
08:14term. The campus will carry about 401 megawatts of critical IT load. With the first capacity entering
08:23service in the second half of 2027 in a full ramp. By early 2028, in the same announcement,
08:32Tara Wolfe agreed to sell its majority stake in a separate joint venture to a Fluidstack-led
08:37investor group, cashing out roughly $450 million of investment at a premium. Communities may be voting
08:47no from Virginia to Indiana. But in Haasville, Kentucky, $19 billion just said yes.
08:55Thanks for watching. If you found this useful, subscribe, leave a like, and drop a comment.
09:03It helps us cover more of these stories.
09:05the comments.
09:14you
09:14you
09:14you
09:14you
09:16you
Comments