00:00Across America, the backlash against artificial intelligence has left the internet and landed in
00:06town halls, courtrooms, and kitchen faucets. Tonight, a secretive company wants to drop a
00:14$1.6 billion data center onto the farmland of one small Wisconsin city, and the residents are
00:22fighting back from federal noise lawsuits to a grid operator that can now switch data centers
00:28off during a heat wave. Here is where the AI build-out collides with the people living beside it.
00:36In Menemone, Wisconsin, a rural city of about 16,000 people, residents have spent months
00:44demanding answers about a data center that arrived cloaked in secrecy. The proposal would cover
00:50roughly 320 acres of farmland, carry a price tag near $1.6 billion. And, until recently,
01:00the developer's identity was hidden behind a shell company. After a fierce public outcry over the
01:06secrecy, the noise, and the water use, city leaders were forced to act. On the 3rd, the mayor stood
01:14before the council and read a brand new draft zoning ordinance aloud, line by line, to set the first
01:22real rules for data centers in the city. Officials stress no vote was taken. This scene is playing out
01:29nationwide. In the first quarter alone, community opposition delayed or blocked 75 projects worth
01:36$130 billion. And that grassroots anger is increasingly ending up in court. A new legal
01:46front has opened against the data center industry. And this time the weapon is an old one. The nuisance
01:52lawsuit experienced mass toward law firms. The same players behind major environmental class actions
02:00have begun recruiting neighbors and suing operators over the relentless low-frequency hum their cooling
02:07systems and backup generators produce around the clock. In one closely watched case, two residents
02:15filed a federal class action against Data 1 USA over a facility in Cumberland County. Describing a
02:22constant droning noise they say has made their homes unlivable. Another suit in Mississippi pairs
02:29nuisance and negligence claims with alleged violations of environmental statutes. Attorneys openly describe
02:37it as a coordinated strategy. A playbook borrowed from past mass tort campaigns against polluters.
02:44For homeowners who feel local boards ignored them, the courtroom has become the last resort. Behind many of
02:51these complaints lies a single, enormous strain. The electrical grid.
02:56That strain has now grown so severe that the nation's largest grid operator has been handed the
03:04power to pull the plug. In late July, the Department of Energy authorized PJM interconnection,
03:11which serves 65 million people across 13 states, to curtail data centers and other large loads during grid
03:19emergencies. Any facility drawing at least 50 megawatts can be ordered to switch to its own backup generators.
03:27Within 15 minutes of an emergency signal, the trigger was a brutal heat wave that pushed demand toward an
03:35all-time record of roughly 1.166,000 megawatts. Hospitals, water treatment plants, and air traffic
03:44control towers are exempt from the cuts. PJM says its power supply costs have jumped more than 60%.
03:53Driven largely by data center demand. And residential customers are footing much of that bill.
03:59But the grid is only half the story. Water tells the other half.
04:05While data centers strain the grid, they are also quietly draining America's water. New analysis
04:12shows the water used to cool AI servers surpassed 264 billion gallons in 2025, enough to supply entire
04:22cities. Even as a punishing drought gripped nearly two-thirds of the country. The collision is not
04:29accidental. Researchers found that of the 809 large data centers now planned across the
04:36United States. Roughly two out of every three are slated for regions that have already spent the past year in
04:43drought. A single large facility can swallow up to five million gallons a day. The equivalent of a town of
04:51tens of thousands of people. As reservoirs shrink and utilities plead with residents to conserve,
04:57communities are asking why so much scarce water is being promised to server farms that mounting
05:04pressure is pushing lawmakers to finally act. And one state has gone further than any other.
05:12Maine has enacted the nation's first statewide moratorium on large data centers. A first in the
05:19country law that halts new facilities drawing more than 20 megawatts until November of 2027. The measure,
05:28known as LD 307, cleared the legislature this spring after a final Senate vote, and reflects a rare bipartisan
05:36alarm over rising electricity rates and water use. Rather than simply banning construction, the law also
05:44creates a new data center coordination council, tasked with protecting rate payers, safeguarding grid
05:51reliability, minimizing environmental harm, and steering any future development toward responsible sites.
05:59Supporters call it a deliberate pause before a wave of subsidies and construction arrives.
06:05Critics call it an overreach that will chase investment to friendlier states.
06:11Either way, other legislatures are watching closely. Yet even with the brakes on,
06:17the demand driving all of this keeps climbing.
06:21To understand why this fight has become so intense, look at the raw numbers behind the AI boom.
06:28In just three years, United States data center electricity demand has nearly doubled,
06:34leaping from around 23 gigawatts in 2023 to roughly 42 gigawatts.
06:41Today, more than 4,500 facilities are already running, with over 700 more under construction across 38 states.
06:50But it is not only the size that alarms engineers. It is the behavior.
06:55This spring, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation issued a rare,
07:01highest urgency alert after blocks of data center demand exceeding 1,000 megawatts abruptly,
07:08dropped offline within seconds during minor grid disturbances.
07:12Loads that massive vanishing in an instant can whipsaw voltage and destabilize the entire system.
07:19In Virginia, data centers already consume more than one in every four kilowatt hours the state uses.
07:26And yet, despite every warning, construction is pressing forward at a record pace.
07:34Nowhere is that clearer than in the high desert of central Utah.
07:38In rural Millard County, developer Jewel Capital Partners has broken ground on what it calls one of the nation's most
07:46advanced data center campuses, an artificial intelligence complex sprawling across roughly 4,000 acres.
07:55County commissioners approved the multi-billion dollar project after months of debate,
08:00including a contested companion solar farm that drew its own public opposition.
08:06Developers say the site's high elevation gives it optimal cooling efficiency,
08:11and they are racing to begin producing power on site by the end of this year.
08:16An admittedly ambitious timeline, backers promise high-paying jobs and a wave of investment
08:22for a region that has long felt overlooked by the state's economy.
08:27To critics, it is one more giant landing in a place with little power to say no.
08:33And the money behind construction on this scale is genuinely staggering.
08:39Consider the single largest deal the industry has ever seen.
08:44A consortium including MGX, Global Infrastructure Partners, Microsoft, Elon Musk's XAI,
08:53Nvidia, BlackRock, and the Sovereign Wealth Funds of Singapore and Kuwait has agreed to acquire aligned
08:59data centers for roughly $40 billion, more than double the previous record for a data center transaction.
09:08It is a vivid snapshot of how the world's most powerful companies and governments are pouring
09:14capital into the physical backbone of artificial intelligence.
09:19Analysts now expect total data center investment to reach around $650 billion.
09:25This year alone, with private equity money flooding in at a five-year high, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta,
09:34Alphabet, and Apple together plan to spend hundreds of billions more.
09:39From a Wisconsin farm field to a Utah desert, the question echoing across the country is no longer
09:45whether this build-out can be stopped. But who will ultimately pay for it?
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