00:00In Florida, it took 12 hours of public fury and a single vote to kill a 3.6 million square
00:06foot
00:07AI campus.
00:09In Indiana, a $13 billion proposal died the same way.
00:14And in Nevada, a city is now taking the federal government to court.
00:19Meanwhile, the nation's largest power grid just handed ratepayers a $16 billion bill.
00:26And data centers are the reason.
00:30We begin in Palm Beach County, Florida, where one of the biggest data center fights in the
00:36country just ended in a single vote.
00:38After a marathon hearing that stretched past 12 hours, with overflow rooms, more than 80
00:45speakers, and a sea of residents in Stop Project Tango shirts, county commissioners voted 5-1
00:53to reject the 3.6 million square foot hyperscale.
00:57AI campus planned near the Arden community.
01:00Commissioner Maria Marino cast the only vote in favor.
01:05Opponents spent months hammering the project's proximity to Saddleview Elementary School and
01:10its potential impact on groundwater, noise, and energy use.
01:16And the board ultimately agreed the project was simply not compatible.
01:20But there is a catch.
01:22The denial came without prejudice.
01:25So the developer can revise the plan and come back.
01:29And the land still carries approved entitlements for more than 2 million square feet of warehouse.
01:35And data center space.
01:38And Florida wasn't the only place a mega project died this week.
01:42In northern Indiana, the St. Joseph County Council rejected a $13 billion data center proposal near
01:50New Carlisle after a meeting that ran 10 hours.
01:55Packed with residents worried about infrastructure, energy, water, and the town's future.
02:02What makes the vote remarkable is what's already there.
02:05Amazon Web Services Project Rainier, a 1,200-acre campus just outside town, keeps expanding and
02:13is expected to eventually draw up to 2.2 gigawatts of power.
02:18It employs 935 full-time workers and enjoys a 35-year tax exemption.
02:25Yet even the amount of water it uses is confidential.
02:29Locked behind a non-disclosure agreement.
02:32For a community already living next to one of the largest AI campuses on Earth.
02:37The message in this vote was blunt.
02:40One is enough.
02:42That resistance is now escalating into a fight with the federal government itself.
02:47Boulder City, Nevada, the town that built the Hoover Dam, voted unanimously to appeal the
02:55Bureau of Land Management's approval of a data center on federal land within city limits.
03:01The project, from developer townsite Solar Minus 2, was originally pitched on city-owned land.
03:09But after residents packed council chambers in protest, the proposal was withdrawn and moved
03:15next door onto BLM-controlled ground, where Washington approved it anyway.
03:20Now the city's appeal heads to the Interior Board of Land Appeals, with no clear timeline
03:27for a decision, and officials admit they've had almost no contact with the BLM beyond confirmation
03:33of the approval.
03:35The developer insists it can be a national model, promising renewable power, waterless direct-to-chip
03:42cooling, and a recycling effort that would return water to Lake Mead.
03:47Residents' response, if it's so sustainable, why did it have to leave city land?
03:54Behind all of this resistance sits one number, and it landed this week.
04:00PJM Interconnection, the nation's largest power grid, serving 67 million people across 13 states
04:08and Washington, D.C., just closed its annual capacity auction.
04:13And it tied the all-time record, $16.4 billion, at $325 per megawatt day.
04:22The grid's independent market monitor says data centers alone account for roughly $6.3 billion
04:29of that total.
04:30And PJM says surging demand has driven supply costs up more than 60%.
04:36Every dollar of it gets paid by ratepayers.
04:39And there's a bigger problem.
04:41For the third straight auction, the market failed to attract enough future power commitments
04:47to meet the grid's own reliability.
04:50Target.
04:51That's the quiet crisis underneath every story tonight.
04:54The biggest machine in American infrastructure is running out of spare capacity.
05:00And data centers are the reason.
05:03The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
05:06Water tells the other half.
05:08In Chesterfield County, Virginia, hundreds of residents packed a Google Open House to ask
05:15one question about the company's three proposed campuses outside Richmond.
05:21How much water and power will they actually use?
05:24They didn't get an answer.
05:26Google representatives said project-specific figures won't be disclosed until the facilities
05:32are operational.
05:34The plans are enormous.
05:35Project Peanut, more than 300 acres and already under construction.
05:41Project Sky, 848 acres planned for four buildings.
05:46And Project Lock, 334 acres for three more.
05:51Residents pressed on why they were learning the details so late in the process.
05:55And why the campuses are rising so close to schools.
06:00Google says it will pay for infrastructure improvements and scheduled a second open house
06:05the very next evening.
06:07But in a drought-tested region, no numbers means no trust.
06:13County governments are taking notice and acting.
06:17In Tennessee, Hamilton County commissioners approved a one-year moratorium on new data centers in rural
06:25unincorporated areas, giving officials time to rewrite zoning rules before the next wave of projects arrives.
06:32County Mayor Weston Womp proposed the pause himself, arguing the county needs its code updated before rural land gets locked
06:41into industrial scale.
06:43Computing.
06:44The moratorium covers only new rural projects.
06:48Existing developments keep moving, including Jailhouse Studios,
06:53a data center rising inside the county's former jail in downtown Chattanooga.
06:59Its developer, Urban Story Ventures, says the site will draw as little as 1 to 5% of the electricity
07:06of a large hyperscale
07:08facility by distributing power across smaller sites.
07:13It's a now familiar pattern playing out across the country.
07:16Not a ban, but a breather.
07:19While the rulebook catches up with the boom.
07:23Even universities are feeling the heat.
07:26In Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, residents and local officials are pushing back on a $1.25 billion research
07:34computing center that the University of Michigan is developing in partnership with Los Alamos.
07:42National Laboratory.
07:43Yes, the Nuclear Weapons Lab.
07:46Dozens packed a township meeting to challenge the project's energy use.
07:51The township's lack of zoning control over university land.
07:55And the security implications of Los Alamos' involvement.
07:59The university insists this is a research computing center.
08:03Not a commercial data center.
08:06Using about one-tenth the energy of a typical facility.
08:09And says the work will target cancer treatment.
08:13Drug development.
08:14Climate science.
08:16Energy resilience.
08:18And national security.
08:19Not weapons manufacturing.
08:22A parcel along textile road near Hydro Park is under consideration.
08:27And a final site decision is expected within weeks.
08:31The township's message so far.
08:33Not so fast.
08:34Yet despite every rejection and pause tonight.
08:39The building keeps getting bigger.
08:41Which brings us to our kicker in Cedar Creek.
08:44Texas.
08:45Pacifico Cedar Creek LLC is seeking approval for a $22 billion data center and power.
08:52Campus spread across 2,842 acres in Bastrop County.
08:58With a twist.
09:00It would never touch the local grid.
09:02The company plans to spend $2.24 billion building its own natural gas power.
09:08Plant.
09:09Generating up to 710 megawatts to feed 490 megawatts of computing.
09:16All behind the fence.
09:18In exchange.
09:18Pacifico is asking for a 10-year state incentive agreement with the school district and three.
09:25Separate 100% tax abatements.
09:28And if Texas says no.
09:30The developer is openly weighing an Ohio site instead.
09:34Where a local moratorium blocks new data center applications until February 2027.
09:41Off the grid.
09:42But not off the hook.
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