00:00A sitting United States senator walked the site of a $20 billion artificial intelligence
00:06campus in rural Georgia, listened to the people who live across the road from it,
00:11and then called for the entire state to stop. In St. Louis, residents took a $3 billion project
00:19to court, and in Kansas, a county said yes to Google, on the condition that it never touches
00:26the water. We begin in Effingham County, Georgia, where Senator Raphael Warnock spent Friday walking
00:35the ground where OpenAI plans to build Project Camellia, a 3.2 gigawatt campus valued at roughly
00:43$20 billion. Warnock met with members of the Protect Effingham Alliance, including John Smith,
00:51who lives directly across the road from the proposed site. Residents told him they learned
00:56about the project only after the deal was already done, and they pressed him on utility bills,
01:03water, noise and light pollution. Warnock came away calling for a statewide moratorium on data center
01:10construction in Georgia, one that could be lifted for an individual project only if there are no
01:16water or electric bill, increases for residents, and no sweetheart tax giveaways for developers.
01:24The county's development authority defended its confidentiality as standard economic development
01:30practice. That frustration over being told after the fact is exactly what has now landed a project in
01:38Missouri in front of a judge. Residents, together with the Missouri Workers Center and the Missouri
01:46Coalition for the Environment, have filed suit against a proposed $3 billion data center near the historic
01:53armory in Midtown St. Louis. The suit names the city, the members of its Board of Adjustment,
02:01and developer David Lambiasso. Its central argument is technical but powerful. A data center is simply not
02:09listed as a conditional use in the zoning district where this one was approved, which means, plaintiffs
02:17say, the Board never had the authority to grant the permit at all. The filing accuses the Board of acting
02:24arbitrarily, capriciously, and contrary to law, and raises heat, air and water pollution, noise,
02:32and higher electricity costs for city residents. Litigation cuts both ways. Though, in Wixom,
02:42Michigan, the developer is the one suing. Wixom Industrial One filed a federal lawsuit claiming
02:49the city's six-month moratorium was illegal, and designed specifically to block its Midwinds Park
02:56proposal. A 519,000-square-foot facility the company says already meets city requirements. The city's
03:05response was not to back down. Officials ended the moratorium early and immediately adopted some of the
03:12strictest data center zoning in the country. A 1,500-foot setback from homes, schools and parks. An
03:21outright ban on drawing well water. Mandatory sound studies. Roughly a hundred residents packed the
03:28August 26th meeting urging the council to fight the lawsuit and make the ordinance as restrictive as it
03:35could legally be. Mayor Patrick Beagle said the goal is standards defensible enough to survive a courtroom.
03:43Some towns are not waiting for a developer to show up at all.
03:47In Jefferson, Texas, the city council unanimously passed a resolution formally opposing data center
03:56development inside city limits. And there is not a single proposal on the table. Council members
04:03pointed to Governor Greg Abbott's statewide moratorium and audit order as a signal that acting preemptively
04:10is the safer play. Residents spoke about water consumption and disruption to local ecosystems and
04:17alderwoman Kimberly. Parsons raised a point most coverage misses. Jefferson draws its power from the
04:25southwest power pool rather than ERCOT, which leaves the town with fewer of the consumer protections Texas
04:32has been writing into rules for its own grid. The resolution calls for further study of the impacts on utilities,
04:40infrastructure, public safety, and the town's economic goals. State governments are answering that
04:49pressure with paperwork rather than prohibitions. Governor Mikey Sherrill signed legislation requiring
04:56every data center in New Jersey to disclose exactly how much electricity and water it consumes.
05:03semi-annual reports to the Board of Public Utilities for three years, covering consumption,
05:10on-site power generation, and where the water is sourced from. It completes the second piece of a
05:17four-part plan she announced in May, following July's data center Fair Share Law, which created a separate
05:24rate structure so that residential customers are not quietly subsidizing. Grid upgrades built for
05:31hyperscale campuses. The administration also issued guidance on community benefits agreements and labor standards,
05:40including prevailing wages. Sherrill has publicly rejected calls for a statewide moratorium,
05:47arguing that municipalities already hold the authority to impose their own restrictions.
05:54municipalities are using exactly that authority. In North Port, Florida, commissioners
06:01moved yesterday on a temporary moratorium on data center development, holding a first reading while an 896,000
06:09square foot facility sits under review in the Yorkshire area. That proposal has not been approved, and residents
06:18turned out to argue it should not be raising environmental impacts, the demand it would place on city utilities, and
06:26a broader
06:27unease about artificial intelligence infrastructure landing in a residential corner. Of Sarasota County, the commission has
06:35scheduled a workshop for September 3 to study data center impacts. Specifically, with a final vote on the pause set
06:44for
06:44September 8, officials framed the logic plainly. The pause buys the city time to determine whether it needs new
06:52regulations before anything gets built. And where the water question gets answered up front, projects still get
07:01approved. Barber County, Kansas commissioners voted two to nothing, with one abstention, to approve an agreement with
07:10Google for Project Helium, the company's first data center in the state, north of the town of Sharon and about
07:17eight
07:17miles east of Medicine Lodge. The campus would run 1.7 million square feet and employ 500 people once. Complete,
07:27with
07:28thousands more during construction. But the critical detail sits in the terms the facility will be air-cooled. And Google
07:36is
07:36expressly prohibited from drilling or constructing any new water well on the property. Noises capped at 55
07:43decibels during the day and 50 at night. Google pays full property taxes plus five and a half million
07:50dollars in community benefit payments. And the money behind all of this keeps climbing. A securities filing
07:59revealed that Nvidia has agreed to backstop as much as 105 billion dollars in financing for a single data center
08:08campus in Pike County, Ohio. Leased by OpenAI, the credit supports an initial 4.25 gigawatts of computing
08:17capacity. With an option to add another 3.75, SB Energy will build and manage the facility at the port's
08:26Pike
08:26technology campus. The site of a former uranium enrichment plant under a 20-year lease. To put
08:34that number in perspective, one campus is being financed at a scale that rivals the entire market value of
08:41most companies in the S&P 500. And the chip maker supplying the hardware is the same party guaranteeing the
08:50debt.
08:58It helps us cover more of these stories.
