00:00A 93-year-old country music legend just declared war on the data center industry.
00:06And he is not alone.
00:08From a Texas songwriter's farmland to a congressional showdown with Elon Musk,
00:13the backlash against America's artificial intelligence build-out has never been louder.
00:20It started with an open letter.
00:23Willie Nelson, 93 years old, took to social media this week to rally Americans against
00:30the wave of data centers sweeping across rural Texas, including his own hometown of Abbott,
00:37where he still owns a home and farmland.
00:40Nelson called these facilities loud, water thieving, and light polluting,
00:46warning that they only destroy the environment around them.
00:49And the scale is staggering.
00:52Developers have proposed building as many as 56 data centers near Abbott alone.
00:57Nelson wrote that the strength of rural America comes from its people and its land.
01:03Not from big industrial footprints.
01:06For a man who can still see stars at night over his farm.
01:10This fight is personal.
01:12And his voice is turning a local zoning battle into a national rallying cry.
01:18That grassroots anger is now colliding with the biggest names in technology.
01:23In Memphis, Congressman Frank Paoloni sent a letter Wednesday demanding that Elon Musk allow
01:30federal officials to tour SpaceX's XAI Colossus data centers.
01:36The massive NVIDIA-powered facilities at the heart of Musk's artificial intelligence empire.
01:43Pauloni accused the company of showing a disregard for the health and well-being of local
01:48communities, pointing to off-grid gas turbines installed without proper permits or pollution controls.
01:56He gave SpaceX until August 11 to hand over facility information.
02:02The demand follows a Justice Department move to defend XAI in a lawsuit brought by environmental
02:08groups and the NAACP over those same turbines.
02:13Paoloni's message was blunt.
02:15Federal backing does not make the practices lawful.
02:19The courtroom battles don't stop there.
02:22In Plymouth Township, Pennsylvania, officials are locked in a bruising legal fight with developer
02:29Brian O'Neill over his proposed 2-million-square-foot data center at a former steel plant.
02:36The township handed O'Neill a 43-point, 9-page list of health, safety, and mitigation conditions,
02:44and his attorneys fired back, calling the requirements too burdensome and challenging the township's
02:51zoning ordinance in court.
02:53Officials say O'Neill first agreed to implement any provisions they proposed, then balked at
02:59the final list Plymouth Township responded Monday night with a 12-page statement, calling
03:05the challenge a blatant attempt to demand approval by tantrum.
03:09The council president says the developer has bullied and intimidated township officials.
03:15Under Pennsylvania law, they can't reject the project outright, but they're not backing
03:21down.
03:23Another high-profile developer is facing his own uprising out west in Box Elder County, Utah.
03:31Shark Tank star Kevin O'Leary is pushing his massive Stratus data center in the remote Wonder
03:36Valley, but the project is now tangled in a fierce dispute over whether it's even moving
03:42forward.
03:44Utah's Military Installation Development Authority said this week its work on the project is paused.
03:50Amid a pending referendum challenge from residents, O'Leary's team flatly disputes that, insisting
03:58they are full steam ahead on power and engineering design.
04:02Residents fighting the project have appealed a county ruling that blocked a November vote.
04:06And a separate lawsuit challenges the legitimacy of the Development Authority's board itself.
04:13O'Leary says he'll file for a water permit by the end of August the referendum battle is
04:19far from over.
04:22State governments are now stepping into the fray in a big way.
04:26In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul held a roundtable in Henrietta this week to champion
04:32the nation's first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers.
04:38Hochul signed an executive order on July 14th imposing a pause of up to one year on state
04:44environmental permitting for these giant facilities.
04:49Buying time to write new standards for projects that devour enormous amounts of electricity and
04:55water.
04:56She is also pursuing legislation to roll back the generous sales tax exemptions that data
05:02centers currently enjoy.
05:05Hochul told local leaders she wants to make sure this technology works for New Yorkers and
05:10their communities, not just the tech giants.
05:15It is the most aggressive state-level action against the industry anywhere in America.
05:21The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
05:25Water tells the other half.
05:27In Pahrump, Nevada, residents packed a town hall to grill officials over a proposed 900-acre
05:34data center along State Route 160.
05:38With the Nye County Commission fielding pointed questions about water consumption and strain on
05:44the power grid, developer Sean D'Alessandro argued that online misinformation,
05:50has clouded public understanding of the project, and tried to win the room with numbers.
05:56$12 million in expected permitting fees for the county, and more than $114 million in annual
06:04tax revenue once the facility is fully built.
06:08He promised the project would secure its own power sources to shield ratepayers from added
06:14costs.
06:14But in a desert county where every gallon counts, residents aren't convinced the trade-off is
06:21worth it.
06:22Yet despite that resistance, construction is reshaping American cities in surprising ways.
06:30In Dallas, newly surfaced zoning records reveal that a proposed data center could extend onto
06:36the site of the historic Dallas Market Hall, raising the very real possibility that the beloved
06:43event venue, which opened in 1960 and has hosted presidents, concerts, and trade shows, could
06:51be demolished.
06:52Developer Crow Holdings announced the 40-acre, 5-story, 245-megawatt project back in January,
07:01working with CleanArc data centers on a design built around high-efficiency cooling and Tier
07:073 Electrical Redundancy.
07:10And here's the twist.
07:11Because of the site's mixed-use zoning, the project may not even need city council approval
07:17to move forward.
07:19Market officials have already stopped booking future events at the hall while they weigh
07:25redevelopment.
07:26And the financial firepower behind all of this construction is simply staggering.
07:32A consortium backed by investment giant BlackRock and Abu Dhabi's MGX Fund has committed an
07:39additional $5 billion in growth capital to aligned data centers.
07:44Just after closing a $40 billion acquisition of one of the world's largest data center
07:50operators, the group says it plans to deploy $30 billion in equity to start, with the potential
07:59to reach $100 billion including debt.
08:02It is a jaw-dropping bet that the demand for artificial intelligence computing power will
08:07keep climbing.
08:09No matter how loud the opposition grows on the ground, Wall Street is pouring money in at
08:15a record pace, even as communities from Texas to Utah fight to keep these facilities out of
08:21their backyards.
Comments