00:00A town of fewer than 10,000 people just told the owner of the New England Patriots what it
00:05thinks of his $16 billion data center, an Ohio township is moving to ban Amazon's $5 billion
00:13campus, and residents in Georgia are suing OpenAI for racketeering.
00:19Now a Republican senator wants the whole industry paused.
00:24In the small town of Sutton, Massachusetts, the Kraft Group, owner of the New England Patriots,
00:32wants to build a $16 billion data center campus, and the first public meeting did not go well.
00:39More than 100 people packed Tuesday night's select board session, spilling into the hallways.
00:46All six residents who spoke opposed the plan.
00:49One played a recording of a data center's constant hum.
00:52And a man was escorted out by police after shouting end it now.
00:57The project calls for 10 buildings on land owned by the Kraft's unified packaging box business.
01:04Drawing roughly 900 megawatts at full build-out, the fourth largest in the country according to
01:10Cleanview, the town manager estimates the first two buildings alone would pay about $10.4 million
01:17a year in property taxes.
01:20Board chair Jonathan Anderson called the proposal far from a done deal.
01:26That same resistance is reshaping the map in southwest Ohio.
01:31The Butler County Planning Commission has unanimously recommended a zoning change for St. Clair,
01:37township that would ban data centers outright, aimed squarely at Amazon's proposed $5 billion,
01:4518-building campus on 600 acres straddling St. Clair and Madison townships.
01:51About 358 of those acres sit inside St. Clair, home to roughly 6,600 people.
01:59Zoning Commission member John Glenn said residents ask them to take these things out of the
02:05township.
02:06And trustee Dustin Gad said there is no place in the township where a project that size would not
02:12affect neighbors.
02:14No one spoke against the ban at Tuesday's hearing.
02:18Trustees give final approval next.
02:20A week after neighboring Trenton voters banned data centers by nearly 80 percent, AWS says it remains
02:28committed to responsible development in Ohio.
02:33That opposition is now making its way into courtrooms.
02:37And the latest target is OpenAI.
02:40Three Effingham County, Georgia residents have sued OpenAI.
02:44Its affiliate Octons Gaw, the county's Industrial Development Authority, and several local officials
02:51over Project Camellia, a planned $20 billion campus on about 1,440 acres near Savannah.
02:59The suit, filed in Effingham County State Court, alleges fraud, civil conspiracy, and violations
03:07of Georgia's racketeering law.
03:09It claims land purchase agreements were signed in May and July.
03:14Before the authorities' board ever considered the project.
03:17And that an August zoning amendment presented as a technical correction quietly changed where
03:23data centers could be built without required public hearings.
03:28The plaintiffs say offers on nearby homes have fallen or vanished.
03:32They seek treble damages and a jury trial.
03:35Attorney Ben Michaud says the case is not an attack on AI itself.
03:41A similar transparency fight is unfolding in Virginia, where a judge refused to toss a lawsuit over
03:48Google's Botetat County campus.
03:51Resident Robert Dallas sued the county, its supervisors, its Economic Development Authority,
03:58and Google's Helio Capital, alleging the board violated Virginia's Freedom of Information Act.
04:05He says a June 2025 closed session discussion never appeared on the published agenda.
04:11And that the agreement, the project announcement, and a water authority deal were all approved 5-0 as last-minute
04:19walk-on items on Tuesday.
04:22Substitute Judge Michael Doucette ruled the case is legally sufficient to proceed.
04:27The county's attorney called any violation technical.
04:31Google has already paid $2.5 million of a promised $4 million to the county.
04:37Ground clearing has begun, and the campus could use up to 8 million gallons of water a day.
04:43Trial is set for Monday.
04:46And now the backlash has reached the Senate Republican Conference.
04:51Missouri Senator Josh Hawley became the first Republican senator to call for a nationwide
04:58moratorium on data centers, posting the demand in capital letters on X as a priority for the next six weeks.
05:06A spokesperson told Politico he wants a federal pause until Congress passes a bill of rights,
05:13guaranteeing taxpayers no rate increases.
05:17The timing is no accident.
05:19Data centers were a focal point in races Republicans lost last week.
05:24And according to Gizmodo, 40 of 41 local ballot measures restricting data centers passed,
05:31with seven municipalities voting for permanent bans.
05:35Until now the push came from Bernie Sanders, whose Senate bill has zero co-sponsors.
05:42And House progressives, President Trump has said communities that fight data centers will end up
05:48backwards and poor.
05:50Hawley's break with that line signals the politics of AI infrastructure are shifting fast.
05:57And the reason these fights keep escalating comes down to one thing.
06:01How all of this will be powered?
06:04A new Bloomberg NEF report finds data center developers have proposed 181
06:10gigawatts of on-site gas-fired generation worldwide.
06:14And more than 90% of it is in the United States.
06:18If every proposed American plant were built and run,
06:22BNEF calculates annual emissions would reach 345 million metric tons.
06:28About 152 million tons more than drawing the same power from the average U.S. grid.
06:35That extra pollution equals roughly 10% of the entire U.S. power sector's emissions last
06:42year.
06:44BNEF project's global data center electricity demand will nearly quadruple to 2,300.
06:5154 terawatt-hours by 2035, about 7% of all electricity use.
06:58The firm warns that behind-the-meter gas plants may keep running long after grid connections
07:03arrive, locking in fossil fuels for decades.
07:08The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
07:12Water tells the other half.
07:13In southern New Mexico, Doña Ana County commissioners unanimously approved the first $3 million of a
07:21$50 million water fund tied to Project Jupiter, the $165 billion oracle and stack data center near
07:31Santa Teresa.
07:32The money will clean and refurbish three water tanks for the utility serving Sunland Park in
07:38Santa Teresa, a system whose arsenic levels now only narrowly meet federal limits.
07:45Applications for the remaining $7 million of an initial $10 million grant are due.
07:51December 10th.
07:53Critics are not satisfied.
07:55Commissioner-elect Daisy Maldonado said the community is not told the truth.
07:59And organizers argue the full $10 million should go directly to the border communities closest
08:06to the site.
08:08The fund comes from a 50% break on the developers' gross receipts taxes.
08:14Yet despite that wave of resistance, the biggest names in tech are still pressing forward.
08:21And Elon Musk is going big.
08:23SpaceX plans to build, own, and operate a $24 billion supercomputer facility and gas-fired
08:31power plant at Starbase, Texas, the company town east of Brownsville that incorporated last year.
08:39A public hearing notice on the city's website sets December 9th as the date Starbase.
08:46Commissioners will consider a tax abatement and development agreement for the 444-acre site.
08:53And the $24 billion covers only the first phase.
08:57The plan faces a new political headwind.
09:00Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa campaigned on halting new data centers until the legislature enacts
09:07stronger protections.
09:09Musk's own post-election reaction on X was that data centers in space are looking pretty appealing.
09:16Right now, the project adds to a Texas pipeline that already includes a 1-gigawatt campus in
09:23Taylor.
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