00:00In Arizona, a county board just voted down what would have been the largest data center project in the entire
00:06state,
00:08and the developer had already cut it by 80% trying to save it from a Kentucky town of 900
00:14people to a fishing city on the coast of Maine.
00:18The same question keeps landing in front of local officials.
00:22More and more of them are answering no.
00:25We start in Pinal County, Arizona, south of the city of Alloy,
00:31where a 3,300-acre campus would have been the largest data center project in the state.
00:38The developer, Vermiland, saw the opposition coming and tried to negotiate.
00:43It cut the plan from 59 buildings down to 11, from two gas-fired power plants down to one,
00:50moved the facility several miles from the nearest neighbors,
00:55pledged to use less water,
00:57and brought in an economist to talk about revenue.
01:00None of it worked.
01:02The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 against Supervisor Jeff Serdi put it plainly,
01:08when 90% of the people are against it.
01:11He votes the will of the people.
01:14Supervisor Rich Vitiello said there were simply too many ifs,
01:18maybes and buts,
01:20and no end user.
01:21Arizona already hosts 160 data centers,
01:25with four dozen more planned.
01:28That kind of local veto is now drawing attention from the very top.
01:33In Bergen, Kentucky, a city of under 1,000 people,
01:38officials are restarting an annexation process for Panatoni's proposed hyperscale campus after an
01:45earlier attempt to bring in more than 1,000 acres was voided.
01:50Annexation matters here,
01:52because it would let the project sit outside county zoning rules entirely.
01:57Activists say the developer is running advertising campaigns while avoiding face-to-face meetings,
02:03and organizer Bethany Correa is calling for third-party expertise to write the zoning ordinance.
02:10Then the president weighed in,
02:13posting that communities opposing data centers will end up backwards and poor,
02:18and that curbing their growth will kill the golden goose.
02:21Governor Andy Beshear disagreed,
02:24saying this is an intensely local decision,
02:27and that the area is going to choose whether it wants them.
02:32And some communities are choosing to shut the door entirely.
02:36In Lake County, Illinois,
02:38the county board voted to ban new data centers across all unincorporated land.
02:44Effective immediately,
02:46with the moratorium running until May 11, 2027,
02:50the ordinance amends Chapter 151 of the county code,
02:54And it does something quietly important,
02:57it writes an actual legal definition of a data center
03:00into the books,
03:02covering both stand-alone buildings and multi-building campuses.
03:07That definition is what county staff will build permanent regulations on over the next eight months.
03:13And if those rules land early,
03:16the board can lift the pause early.
03:18The planning,
03:19building,
03:20zoning and environmental committee had recommended the measure unanimously just days before the
03:26full board took it up.
03:28Lake County is one of the fastest moving jurisdictions in Illinois on this issue.
03:35Not every fight is over farmland.
03:37In Eastport, Maine,
03:40a company called Deep Green Holdings wants to put an AI data center underwater.
03:46Submerged in the Western Passage,
03:48using the cold Atlantic itself as the cooling system,
03:52residents are not persuaded.
03:54The city is holding a public hearing on two citizen-initiated ordinances,
03:59one of which would permanently ban large-scale data centers outright.
04:04The planning board already recommended adopting that ban,
04:08while dismissing a second measure that would have required voter approval for major projects.
04:14Citing a conflict with the city charter,
04:17a resident coalition called ECHO is petitioning the city to seek intervener status in the federal
04:23permitting process.
04:25The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accepted Deep Green's preliminary permit application in
04:32August that allows study,
04:34not construction,
04:36and has since accepted a similar filing for Alaska's Cook Inlet.
04:41Every one of these projects comes back to the same problem,
04:45where the power comes from.
04:47And the answer this week came out of Iowa.
04:50The Department of Energy closed a loan of up to $1.9 billion to NextEra Energy to
04:56restart the Duane-Arnold Energy Center,
05:00a 615-megawatt nuclear plant that has been dark since 2020,
05:06when a derecho with winds near 140 miles an hour tore apart its cooling towers.
05:12The restart is underpinned by a 25-year power purchase agreement with Google,
05:18which takes the output for its Iowa data centers,
05:22with Central Iowa Power Cooperative taking the remainder.
05:26NextEra is targeting commercial operation in the first quarter of 2029.
05:31Pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval,
05:35an economic study puts the benefit to Iowa above $9 billion over 25 years.
05:43While the federal government finances the supply,
05:47local governments are busy writing the rules.
05:50In Spring Hill Township, Pennsylvania,
05:53supervisors approved a temporary ban on data center and power plant applications while they finish
05:59two ordinances that would restrict both to conditional uses in industrial zones.
06:06The setbacks are specific, 200 feet from any property line,
06:11400 feet from a home,
06:13and greater distances still for power plants.
06:16A companion noise ordinance caps sound at 55 decibels during the day and 45 at night.
06:23With additional limits on low-frequency vibration,
06:27solicitor James Tomasi says the rules are necessary because current zoning lets data centers in
06:33through special exceptions with no clear restrictions.
06:38The trigger was Nadara's interest in 800 acres near Gans.
06:42Votes were pushed to September 17th to satisfy state notice requirements.
06:49That same instinct showed up twice in one night in South Carolina.
06:54In Mount Pleasant,
06:55Town Council took up a 120-day moratorium on data center requests,
07:01meant to buy staff time to close a loophole that could let hyperscale facilities into light.
07:07Industrial Zones
07:08Mayor Wilhaney says the town has to act before the applications arrive,
07:13and that hyperscale centers will not be permitted here.
07:17The PAWS is also designed to separate genuinely large facilities from small business data.
07:24Operations that carry none of the same load.
07:27Meanwhile in Jasper County,
07:29one of the fastest-growing counties in the country,
07:32leaders took up a first reading on their own PAWS.
07:36Covering data centers,
07:38cryptocurrency mining,
07:40rezoning requests,
07:42permits and incentives,
07:43officials there say they need time to find out whether existing infrastructure can carry the
07:50electricity and water demand at all.
07:53But for every PAWS,
07:55somewhere is still saying yes.
07:57Kearney, Nebraska,
07:59a city of about 33,000 people,
08:02spent more than a decade courting this industry,
08:05and it is about to land a campus called Tech One Crossing.
08:10The developer,
08:11worldwide mission critical,
08:13would replace an existing 100-megawatt cryptocurrency mine with a facility drawing 3.
08:20168 megawatts,
08:22more electricity than Kearney,
08:24Grand Island and Hastings consume combined.
08:27Kearney is one of the first cities in Nebraska to pass a zoning ordinance written specifically for
08:33data centers with restrictions on noise,
08:38water use and energy,
08:39and the developer has applied for a conditional use permit under those new rules.
08:45Phase 1 targets completion in late 2027.
08:49Full capacity would not arrive until roughly 2030.
08:53It is a bet placed in the middle of a state pulling the other way.
08:58Thanks for watching.
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