00:00In Eastern Ohio, protesters just learned the hardest truth of the data center boom.
00:05Their county government has no legal power to stop the project they're fighting.
00:11From a Native Nations lawsuit against a $19.5 billion campus in New York,
00:17to power bills climbing so fast the White House is calling a second summit.
00:22The collision between AI infrastructure and everyday Americans is escalating by the day.
00:30We begin in Cambridge, Ohio, where residents of Guernsey County spent their weekend on a protest line
00:37and discovered the deck may already be stacked against them.
00:41The project they're fighting was pitched to county commissioners on June 9 by Smart Energy
00:46partners and a local real estate agent named Jason Miller.
00:51But here's the twist that has residents furious.
00:54Under Ohio law, county commissioners hold only the powers the state legislature gives them.
01:01And without a voter-approved county zoning resolution, Guernsey County has no authority to regulate land use at all.
01:09A private landowner can simply sell to a developer.
01:12And the data center can move forward without asking anyone's permission.
01:18Protesters, part of a national mobilization organized by the group Humans First,
01:23say they're worried about their water supply, their water quality, and their electric bills.
01:30For now, all they can legally do is make noise.
01:34That kind of opposition is now making its way into courtrooms.
01:38And in western New York, it's being led by a sovereign native nation.
01:43The Tonawanda Seneca Nation, the Sierra Club, and a local resident have sued in state Supreme Court
01:51to stop a roughly $19.5 billion data center planned at the Stamp Industrial Park in Genesee County.
01:59The suit argues the 2012 incentive zoning agreement that created the
02:041,250-acre park violates state law by locking the town of Alabama's zoning in stone.
02:12For decades, it also alleges the county's development agency handed Stream U.S. data centers $472 million
02:21in subsidies without a full environmental review or detailed project plans.
02:28And the timing is brutal for the developer.
02:31Governor Hochul's new statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers already appears to freeze the
02:37project's permits for up to a year.
02:40Two fronts.
02:42One message.
02:43Not here.
02:44Not like this.
02:46And the reason this resistance keeps gaining momentum comes down to one thing.
02:52The electric bill.
02:53Across the country, the costs of the data center billed out are landing on households.
02:59One Virginia homeowner opened his January bill to find it at $281.
03:06Roughly triple what he normally pays.
03:08The White House has taken notice.
03:11Preparing a second.
03:13Expanded Ratepayer Protection Pledge Summit in the coming weeks.
03:17Asking utilities and developers to promise that data centers will pay their own way on the grid.
03:23But there's a catch that critics keep pointing to.
03:27The pledge is entirely non-binding.
03:29And no formal oversight mechanism exists to verify that anyone is keeping their word.
03:35With analysts warning that billions of dollars in grid costs have already shifted onto the public.
03:41The question hanging over the summit is a simple one.
03:45Will a handshake be enough to stop the next rate hike?
03:49The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
03:53Water tells the other half.
03:55And nowhere more starkly than in Texas.
03:58The states draft 2027 water plan projects that supplies available in a drought of.
04:04Record will shrink from 15.5 million acre-feet down toward 14 million by.
04:112080.
04:12Mostly because aquifers are being drained faster than they can refill.
04:16Without new supplies or conservation.
04:19Texas faces a shortfall of 3.6 million acre-feet as soon as 2030.
04:26Now layer on the AI boom.
04:28A University of Texas study estimates data centers could consume 3-9% of all water used statewide by 2040.
04:38Counting both cooling and the power plants that feed them.
04:41The proposed fix.
04:43Reservoirs.
04:44Reuse.
04:46Desalination.
04:47Carries a price tag near $174 billion.
04:51In Texas.
04:53The fight over data centers is fast becoming a fight over water itself.
04:59State and local governments are taking notice.
05:02And this week.
05:03North Carolina becomes the next battleground.
05:07In Alamance County.
05:09Commissioners take up data center regulation at their board meeting.
05:13With a possible moratorium on the table.
05:16Not far away in rural hall.
05:18Residents packed a community meeting to oppose a 129-acre data center ahead of.
05:24A final rezoning vote on July 30th.
05:28And in Stokes County.
05:29Commissioners narrowly voted down a moratorium of their own while the massive project Delta looms.
05:36A development whose original rezoning approval was voided by a court in April over a defective.
05:43Public notice.
05:44With Fayetteville reviving its own data center ordinance and state lawmakers weighing a statewide regulation bill.
05:52North Carolina's quiet rural counties are quickly becoming some of the loudest rooms in the American data center debate.
06:00And every vote is drawing a crowd.
06:03Yet despite that regulatory wave.
06:06Construction is pressing forward.
06:09And in Oregon.
06:10It's accelerating.
06:12Sabi data centers.
06:13One of the largest privately owned multi-tenant operators in the country.
06:19Celebrated the start of construction on a 714,000 square foot campus in.
06:25UMATILA.
06:26Designed to support more than 150 megawatts of capacity.
06:31The site sits in what's being called the Columbia River Cloud Corridor.
06:36A fast-growing cluster of hyperscale campuses drawn to the river's cheap, reliable, renewable hydroelectric power.
06:45The first of two data halls is scheduled to come online in April of 2028.
06:50While communities elsewhere fight over drought-stricken aquifers and strained grids.
06:56The Columbia Corridor is pitching itself as the rare place with power to spare.
07:01And hyperscale developers are clearly listening.
07:05In this land rush.
07:06Geography is destiny.
07:08And the river towns of eastern Oregon are cashing in on theirs.
07:14And the players behind that construction keep multiplying.
07:17This week a brand new operator called Coraval officially launched.
07:22A joint venture between Spanish construction giant Axe Group and global infrastructure partners.
07:29The infrastructure arm of BlackRock.
07:32Coraval isn't starting small.
07:34It debuts with a major hyperscaler customer already signed.
07:38Covering roughly 140 megawatts of critical IT load across three facilities at its.
07:45Dallas-Fort Worth campus.
07:47With an option to expand by another 100 megawatts.
07:51The launch says everything about where this market is headed.
07:55The world's biggest asset manager and one of Europe's biggest builders creating a purpose-built.
08:01Platform for AI infrastructure.
08:04With an anchor tenant locked in before the company even had a public name.
08:09Demand is so intense that new entrants no longer break into the market.
08:13They arrive with the market already waiting for them.
08:18And that appetite brings us to our kicker.
08:21Because behind the scenes.
08:23Big pieces of this industry may be about to change hands.
08:27The Wall Street Journal reports that bankers are quietly shopping ownership stakes in a string of.
08:33Data center operators.
08:35Data center operators.
08:35Netrality.
08:37Data bank.
08:38Edged.
08:38And edge core digital infrastructure.
08:41As owners race to cash out while investor demand runs red hot.
08:46One name keeps surfacing as a potential buyer.
08:50Helix Digital Infrastructure.
08:52A new platform backed by private equity giant KKR.
08:56The sell-off follows last year's $40 billion takeover of aligned data centers by a consortium
09:04including BlackRock, MGX, Microsoft, and NVIDIA.
09:09The deal that reset the price of the entire sector.
09:13Owners are seeking exits.
09:15Buyers are flush with capital.
09:17And the second half of 2026 is shaping up to be one long auction.
09:22Whether the fundamentals justify those prices.
09:25That's the trillion dollar question.
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