00:00Six local governments in Virginia went into closed session on Friday, came back out, and approved a land deal with
00:07a company almost nobody in the room had ever heard of.
00:11They would not say what is going on the property, and that instinct, decide first, explain later, is turning up
00:19everywhere right now, from a federal courtroom in Arkansas to the floor of the U.S. House.
00:26We start in the Roanoke Valley, where a board representing six Virginia localities voted Friday to enter a purchase agreement
00:35for land at Woodhaven Technology Park.
00:39The buyer is a company called Clearview Dynamics.
00:42The Western Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority declined to confirm what the property would be used for.
00:50A couple dozen opponents packed the room anyway, convinced it is a data center.
00:56Julie Bivens, of the Southwest Virginia Data Center Transparency Alliance, told the board the water issues and the electrical issues
01:05are already known,
01:07that the site sits beside a residential community, and that voting while residents have none of the details is, in
01:14her word, maddening.
01:16After the closed session, Roanoke Vice Mayor Terry McGuire pressed the authority's own attorney on what had just happened, reminding
01:25him,
01:26you all work for us.
01:29That instinct to keep the details private is exactly what one utility just tested in federal court.
01:35And Lost Entergy Arkansas asked a judge to order two newspapers to take down articles built on.
01:43Confidential records describing its power arrangement with Google.
01:47Those documents had been released by mistake.
01:50Through a Freedom of Information Act request, U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky denied the temporary
01:56restraining order against the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the Arkansas Times.
02:02The reporting revealed that Google will pay Entergy $526 million toward a $1.6 billion solar facility known as Cypress
02:13Solar,
02:14built to feed a West Memphis data center campus.
02:18Legal observers pointed to a 1989 Supreme Court decision holding that the first amendment protects publishing truthful information
02:27that a government agency handed over by accident.
02:32And the reason these fights keep escalating is that data centers have stopped being a zoning story
02:38and become an election story.
02:41Campaigns and outside groups have now spent more than $45 million on advertising.
02:47That mentions data centers in this year's governor.
02:51House and Senate races.
02:53What makes that number unusual is who is spending it.
02:56Democrats and Republicans are running against the same facilities.
03:00In the same districts, sometimes in the same week, more than 30 candidates around the country have signed something
03:08called the AI Pact.
03:10A pledge built on five commitments, including an end to tax breaks and special deals for data centers.
03:18And in Wisconsin, plans for a 672-acre campus backed by Oracle and OpenAI in Port Washington have
03:26become a defining issue in the race for governor.
03:31All of that political pressure now has a bill attached to it.
03:35Republican leadership plans to bring the Ratepayer Protection Act to the floor of the U.S. House.
03:42Next week, ahead of the midterms, and a spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed the timing.
03:48The legislation is bipartisan, and its premise is simple.
03:53Households should not quietly subsidize the transmission lines.
03:58The substations and the new generation being built to serve large commercial data centers.
04:04The numbers behind it are difficult to argue with.
04:07The Energy Information Administration says U.S. electricity consumption will hit record levels too.
04:13Years running, climbing from 4,195 billion kilowatt-hours last year to 4,270 this year, and 4,349 next
04:27year.
04:28Microsoft alone is targeting roughly 38 gigawatts of capacity by 2032.
04:35The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
04:39Water tells the other half.
04:41And in central Florida, the arithmetic has already been done.
04:45Orange County, the county that contains Orlando, is weighing a moratorium of at least one year on
04:51new artificial intelligence data center applications.
04:56Vice Mayor and District 5 Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad brought the proposal forward.
05:02And commissioners take it up on September 15th.
05:06The pause would give staff time to study environmental, social and economic impacts,
05:12consult experts and residents, and review the county's own development standards.
05:18That last point matters.
05:20Because the Land Development Code has no language regulating data centers at all.
05:25They are simply allowed under industrial zoning.
05:28Meanwhile, the regional water supply plan projects a groundwater shortfall of 96 million gallons a day
05:36across Orange and four neighboring counties by 2045.
05:42Other cities are trying to define the problem before they regulate it.
05:46And Lubbock, Texas has now put a number on it.
05:50The city council passed a resolution saying it will not consider any large-scale data center until
05:57regulations are in place.
05:59Two days later, Assistant City Manager Eric Regino laid out a framework for the Planning and Zoning Commission.
06:07Large-scale would mean 75 megawatts, or 100,000 gallons of water a day.
06:14Those facilities would need closed-loop or air-dry cooling.
06:17A licensed engineer's power study.
06:20And two public hearings before approval.
06:23More than 1,500 residents answered a city survey.
06:27And water and energy came back as the top two concerns.
06:31But the commission pushed back hard.
06:34One member warned that if this is what gets adopted,
06:37Lubbock will never see a data center inside its city limits.
06:42Yet despite that regulatory wave,
06:45approvals are still going through,
06:47and in Colorado one just survived an eight-hour public hearing.
06:52Weld County commissioners voted five to nothing to approve a use-by-special-review permit for
06:57Global AI,
07:00clearing the way for a 41-acre data center on the former Eastman Kodak and CareStream Health
07:06campus near Windsor.
07:08The New York-based company bought the 438-acre site last year.
07:13And the finished facility could become the largest data center in the state.
07:18Residents spent the day raising concerns about water use,
07:22noise,
07:23electricity demand,
07:25and what they described as insufficient outreach from the company.
07:29The board did not reject any of it.
07:31Instead it attached conditions.
07:34Global AI must use a closed-loop cooling system,
07:38continuously monitor noise against established ambient levels,
07:42and post a decommissioning plan and bond within six months.
07:47And the financial commitment behind all of this is where the fight gets sharpest in Port Washington,
07:54Wisconsin.
07:55A $15 billion campus backed by Oracle and OpenAI is set to receive roughly $458 million in tax benefits
08:05from a city of about 12,000 people.
08:08Voters answered with something no American city had tried before,
08:12a referendum requiring public
08:14approval for any future tax increment district worth more than $10 million.
08:21It passed with about 66% of the vote.
08:24It does not stop the current project.
08:27It stops the next one.
08:29The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce sued to block the referendum,
08:34and a judge declined to halt it.
08:37672 acres,
08:39one ballot question,
08:41and a template that other towns are already copying.
08:59As you can see,
09:01that is the source of the address of the country that goes to
09:02the country that goes to the government.
09:03Since that,
09:04the current country that goes to the city of about 12,000 people,
09:04that is a unique position and that is a,,
09:05You
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