00:03A Michigan township just walked into the voting booth and crushed a data center.
00:09Nearly 90% said no.
00:11From a statewide freeze in Texas to power bills climbing across a 13-state grid.
00:17The fight over America's AI build-out has turned into a full-blown revolt.
00:23Here's what's driving the backlash.
00:25And the record-shattering money still pouring in anyway.
00:30We start in Augusta Township, Michigan, where residents didn't wait for their officials to act.
00:37They took the fight straight to the ballot box.
00:40Voters overturned the industrial rezoning of more than 500 acres of farmland near Milan.
00:46Land that New York-based Thor Equities had eyed for a sprawling data center.
00:52The margin was staggering.
00:542,314 residents voted no.
00:58Just 269 voted yes.
01:01Nearly 90% against neighbors gathered petition signatures to force the referendum after.
01:07The township board approved the rezoning.
01:10Then turned out in force to reverse it.
01:12It's one of the clearest signs yet that ordinary Americans are willing to spend their own weekends.
01:19And their own ballots.
01:21To stop these projects.
01:23That grassroots resistance is now being matched by dramatic action at the state level.
01:29And nowhere is state action more dramatic than in Texas.
01:34On August 3, Governor Greg Abbott ordered a stunning pause.
01:38No new data center can connect to the state's main power grid until regulators audit every project.
01:45Already in the queue.
01:47The scale is almost hard to believe.
01:50ERCOT is fielding roughly 474 gigawatts of interconnection requests.
01:55More than five times the state's all-time record demand.
01:59And data centers account for about 90% of it.
02:03Abbott is demanding that developers disclose their water use.
02:07Their tax breaks.
02:09Their cooling technology.
02:11And exactly who owns them.
02:12Any project that refuses gets denied a grid connection.
02:17ERCOT has already suspended pending approvals and will seek an exception at its August 20th meeting.
02:24And the reason states keep slamming on the brakes comes down to one thing landing in every mailbox.
02:31Your electricity bill.
02:33Across the 13-state PJM region.
02:37The nation's largest grid.
02:38Data center demand has sent capacity prices through the roof.
02:43In the latest auction.
02:44The price utilities pay to guarantee power leapt from under $29 per megawatt day.
02:51Two years ago to more than $329 today.
02:55A roughly tenfold increase.
02:58Analysts pin 63% of that jump directly on data centers.
03:02Translating into some $9 billion in extra costs that will be recovered from ordinary.
03:10Households.
03:11The Natural Resources Defense Council projects the typical family in PJM territory could see bills.
03:18Climb around $70 a month by 2028.
03:22Consumer advocates keep asking the same question.
03:25Why should families subsidize infrastructure built to serve a handful of trillion-dollar tech companies?
03:33To meet that demand.
03:35Developers are chasing radical new ways to make power.
03:40Consider what's rising in the New Mexico desert.
03:43A company called New Era Energy and Digital.
03:46Until recently a helium producer.
03:49Has locked up an option on roughly 3,500 acres in Lee County to build an AI.
03:56Data center campus of up to 7 gigawatts.
03:59What makes it remarkable isn't just the size.
04:02It's the power plan.
04:04Rather than lean on a strained grid.
04:07New Era intends to generate its own electricity on site.
04:11Pairing more than 2 gigawatts of natural gas with a planned 5 gigawatt plus nuclear.
04:17Installation.
04:18The company picked Lee County for its gas pipelines.
04:22Existing infrastructure.
04:24Water.
04:25And skilled labor.
04:26With first power targeted for 2028.
04:29It's a bet that the only way to feed the AI boom is to build entirely new energy from scratch.
04:36But new power collides with an old and unforgiving limit.
04:40Water.
04:42Because these facilities don't just drink electricity.
04:45They drink water.
04:47And they're increasingly being built where there's the least of it.
04:50A new analysis finds that two thirds of the 809 data centers planned across the.
04:56United States are slated for land gripped by drought over the past year.
05:01Including water stressed corners of Virginia and Georgia.
05:05In the Phoenix area alone.
05:07Nearly 60 facilities are projected to demand around 177 million gallons of.
05:14Water every single day.
05:16Meanwhile the federal government has finalized cuts requiring California.
05:21Arizona.
05:22And Nevada.
05:23To slash their Colorado River use by 16 to 20 percent through 20.
05:2928.
05:30A plan critics note never even mentions the surging thirst of data centers.
05:35For communities already rationing.
05:38The arithmetic is starting to feel impossible.
05:41State lawmakers are taking notice.
05:44In Oklahoma.
05:46They've decided to put the rules in writing.
05:49This week Governor Kevin Stitt signed the data center customer ratepayer protection act.
05:55A new law designed to keep the cost of powering these giants off of residences bills.
06:01It defines a large load customer as any new facility adding 75 megawatts or more of demand.
06:08And it requires those customers to cover the cost of the energy infrastructure they need.
06:14Rather than socializing it across households.
06:17Small businesses.
06:19And traditional industry.
06:21Stitt paired it with a Groundwater Modernization Act aimed at protecting the state's water supply.
06:27It's part of a nationwide shift.
06:30More than 300 data center bills have moved through state houses this year.
06:35As lawmakers pivot from handing out incentives to demanding accountability.
06:40Yet even amid that regulatory wave.
06:43Construction is pressing forward at a breathtaking pace.
06:47Take Sulphur Springs.
06:50Texas.
06:51Where developer MSB Global Services is planning one of the most ambitious campuses in the country.
06:58Dubbed the Matrix.
07:00The project would span 1,677 acres and deliver 3 gigawatts of computing capacity across 30 AI optimized data center
07:10buildings.
07:11A build out the company values at some $18.7 billion.
07:16It's the kind of hyperscale footprint that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
07:22And it lands in the very state that just froze new grid connections.
07:27Projects like the Matrix show why the interconnection queue in Texas has swelled to record size.
07:33And why regulators are now scrambling to figure out which builds are real and which are merely speculative.
07:41The construction ambition is staggering.
07:44But the financing behind these projects may be even more so.
07:49Which brings us to the money.
07:52Meta has just closed one of the largest private capital deals ever recorded.
07:56A financing package of nearly $30 billion to build out its Hyperion data center in rural.
08:03Richland Parish.
08:05Louisiana.
08:06Meta partnered with asset manager Blue Owl Capital.
08:10Keeping a 20% stake.
08:12While Morgan Stanley arranged more than $27 billion in debt and roughly two and a.
08:18Half billion in equity through a special purpose vehicle.
08:22When it comes online in 2029.
08:26Hyperion will span more than 4 million square feet and draw up to 5 gigawatts of power.
08:32Meta's largest data center anywhere on earth.
08:35From a farmland vote in Michigan to a $30 billion deal in Louisiana.
08:41The build out is not slowing down.
08:43And the question of who pays.
08:45And who decides.
08:47Is only getting louder.
08:49Is only getting louder.
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