00:00Austin has spent two decades courting technology companies.
00:04This week its council told city staff to write the rules that decide which data centers are allowed
00:10inside the city limits, and to define the ban on the largest ones as aggressively as the law will let
00:17them.
00:18That is where this fight has arrived.
00:21We begin in Austin, Texas, where the city council voted unanimously to start writing its own data center rules.
00:30And made clear where those rules are heading.
00:33The resolution tasks staff with a months-long process covering location, size, water use, energy use, noise and lighting,
00:43and council amended the staff recommendation to require binding regulations by the end of this year.
00:50What matters is the framing.
00:52Members said openly they intend to define which data centers are allowed inside the city limits and
00:58which are prohibited, and to draw the line against wholesale and hyperscale facilities as aggressively as the law permits.
01:07A majority had already declared complete opposition to those projects before the vote.
01:13In one of the country's signature technology cities, the default answer is shifting from yes to no.
01:21That kind of local resistance is now drawing return fire in federal court.
01:26Developer Raiden Acquisitions and property owner Cal Realty have sued the city of Gibraltar, Michigan, over its one-year moratorium
01:35on data centers,
01:37filing a 30-page complaint that calls the pause unlawful.
01:41Their central allegation is about timing.
01:44They say the city knew about the proposed project, had already begun reviewing the site plan,
01:50and then adopted a targeted moratorium weeks later specifically to avoid finishing that review.
01:57The property is the former McClouth steel mill, and the plaintiffs say the delay has put the sale of the
02:04site in jeopardy.
02:05Michigan legal experts have generally said communities stand on solid ground using moratoriums.
02:12As long as they are not used to delay a project indefinitely.
02:16This case tests exactly where that line sits.
02:21Not every campaign against a data center clears the bar.
02:25In San Angelo, Texas, the city clerk's office certified a recall petition against District 2 council member Joe Self.
02:35Insufficient, circulators had returned 401 certified signatures at the start of the month.
02:42But reviewers found 129 of them invalid, leaving 272.
02:48The city charter required 385, or 30% of the votes cast in the last district election.
02:56The effort came from the San Angelo Data Center Citizen Coalition,
03:01which argues the city has fallen short on transparency, public process and access to information around proposed development,
03:10including the Skybox by Emergent project.
03:12One piece of that campaign did survive.
03:16A third petition, targeting District 3 council member Harry Thomas,
03:21met the charter threshold and is now headed to voters.
03:25A temporary pause is one thing.
03:29Eastport, Maine is now moving toward something permanent.
03:33The city's planning board voted unanimously to recommend a permanent ban on data centers after a
03:39public hearing on citizen-initiated ordinances
03:43and expanded the proposal so that it covers every zoning district in the city rather than a subset.
03:49The board also advised dismissing a companion ordinance that would have required voter approval for
03:56large commercial projects, citing conflicts with the city charter.
04:01All of this sits on top of a 180-day council moratorium adopted earlier this month.
04:08And it is driven by a genuinely unusual proposal.
04:12Deep Green Holdings is pursuing a federal permit for an underwater artificial intelligence data
04:18center in the Bay of Fundy.
04:21Councilors take up the recommendations at a special meeting on September 9th.
04:27Behind every one of these fights sits a physical constraint that no ordinance created.
04:33Demand for generator step-up transformers.
04:36The units that connect a power plant to the grid
04:39grew 274% between 2019 and 2025.
04:45Demand for substation transformers rose 116% over the same stretch.
04:51Domestic manufacturing did not come close to keeping pace.
04:56Lead times that ran 24 to 30 months before 2020 now stretch past three years.
05:02For large high-voltage units, with some quotes running far longer depending on the manufacturer's
05:09backlog of roughly 16 gigawatts of American data center capacity announced for this year.
05:16Only about 5 gigawatts was actually under construction at mid-year.
05:21And analysts estimate 30-50% of the broader pipeline is at real risk of delay or
05:28cancellation.
05:29Not from financing.
05:31Not from chips.
05:32From steel and copper that cannot be built fast enough.
05:36The grid is one limit.
05:39Groundwater is the other.
05:40And in Wisconsin the argument has narrowed to three wells.
05:44The Port Washington Board of Public Works has recommended that the city approve a request
05:50from
05:50Vantage data centers to use three existing private wells at its lighthouse campus.
05:57A 672-acre site.
06:00Residents in the surrounding town.
06:02Who live near the campus and draw from the same aquifer.
06:06Urge the city not to approve it.
06:08Their concern is simple and specific.
06:11They are not arguing about a distant reservoir or a state average.
06:15They are arguing about the water in their own wells.
06:19A vote on the permit had already been delayed once amid an uproar at an earlier meeting.
06:24It is a small technical decision on paper.
06:27And a very large one for the households next door.
06:32New York is arguing with itself over where the threshold belongs.
06:37State Senator Kristen Gonzalez is publicly urging Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the responsible
06:43Data Center Development Act, which passed both chambers in June and has been waiting since.
06:50The governor already has a moratorium in place through Executive Order 62, which pauses environmental
06:58permits for facilities of 50 megawatts or more.
07:01The bill would reach considerably further.
07:04Generally applying to data centers of 20 megawatts and up.
07:09A threshold that captures a much larger share of what actually gets built.
07:1360 members of the Assembly and Senate signed a letter this month pressing for the governor's
07:20signature.
07:21If she signs it, New York becomes the first state in the country with a data center moratorium
07:27written into statute.
07:29Rather than resting on an executive order.
07:33And against all of that resistance, the largest single commitment of the week cleared its final
07:39regulatory step.
07:41The Georgia Public Service Commission approved Georgia Power's contract to serve OpenAI's
07:47project.
07:48Camellia in Effingham County, a 1,400-acre campus of four hyperscale buildings backed by 3,200
07:57megawatts of power under a 25-year agreement.
08:00Under the terms, OpenAI covers all of the infrastructure costs required to serve the complex
08:07and commits up to 1,000 megawatts of flexible demand response, meaning the utility can throttle
08:15delivery during peak periods.
08:17Georgia Power projects the deal, combined with its other large load contracts, will save a
08:24typical residential customer at least $15 a month starting in 2020.
08:29Nine, critics, including the Sierra Club, object that the commission staff signed off without
08:36a direct commission vote and that key terms remain confidential.
08:42Thanks for watching.
08:44If you found this useful, subscribe, leave a like, and drop a comment.
08:50It helps us cover more of these stories.
08:59You
