A data center is moving into a small town. Residents say it will ruin their history

Nobody wants to lose their history and lose themselves because once this data center come up

it's going to be hard for me and my sisters and brothers to want to stay here

Wherever you live, there's a growing chance that a data center could be coming to your county, town, or neighborhood

Warehouses full of computers are looking to connect to the grid, But it's sparking backlash among existing residents, including some whose families have been there for generations

And we had promised my dad we would stay here. When he passed, he said, I'm turning it over to y'all

But I didn't think I would be part in the data center. From chat GPT to AI-generated video, artificial intelligence is taking off

Training and running AI models requires an enormous amount of computing power

Researchers have raised concerns over how much electricity and water data centers will consume

And in Taylor, Texas, a facility from Blueprint Data Centers was approved on vacant land just a few hundred feet from a neighborhood

The plot is important to residents like Pamela Griffin, who grew up with it as a place to play

Now we hear that the land has been sold to a data center, and a data center doesn't benefit us at all in this community

Basically, it hurts us. We're a poor community. We can't afford to just pack up and move because a big data center is coming in our neighborhood

So we have to get up and fight. Griffin and other neighbors went to city council to share their concerns before the data center was approved

We didn't get no help. When we went, they was like, well, we see your passion, we see your concern

Well, basically said there's nothing we can do. Some city governments have taken action

In August St Charles Missouri became the nation first city to pass a one moratorium on new data center construction The ban came after residents raised concerns about a facility known as Project Cumulus

Virginia is the epicenter of data centers for a number of reasons

including proximity to the nation's capital, access to land and electricity, and the low likelihood of catastrophic weather events

But some residents there have long resisted data center development. If you are only in this fight to stop what's in your neighborhood, you're going to lose

Because another one's coming right behind you. In Prince William County, Virginia, Elena Schlossberg wants to prevent changes to the quiet rural lifestyle she enjoys

But her mission doesn't stop at data centers that affect her. She cites noise concerns, the amount of energy needed to power data centers, and potential changes to the local environment

and she's distrustful of the companies behind new facilities. When they say, oh, it's going to look beautiful

they're not including the transmission of diesel generators as substations. They're not including how they have to denude everything of all vegetation

Some data centers use water to cool their computers, consuming 17 billion gallons in 2023

But that's only part of the picture. The massive footprint of water used by data centers is largely due to the water that is used by generating the electricity for the data centers

Melissa Scanlon is a water policy expert at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

If we're talking about the total consumption in 2023, that 228 billion gallons per year, that's about the amount of water that would be needed for more than 7.6 million Americans in a year for all of their uses

And so that's a little more than the population of the entire state of Arizona

Nationwide there are nearly 3 data centers and they can use the same amount of electricity as 5 to 20 million households Hundreds more data centers are currently under construction or in the planning phase

Real estate company Cushman and Wakefield tracked proposed data centers across the country

and found they would require 79 gigawatts of power at any given moment. The U.S. would need

as much power as is produced by about 40 Hoover dams to meet that electricity demand

Back in Taylor, the Blueprint Data Center's facility plans to use a closed-loop cooling

system. That type of system recycles cooling liquid so it can fill up with water once without

the need to continuously use more. When Pamela Griffin was researching the property Blueprint

Data Centers had purchased in Taylor, she discovered a deed from when it was sold to

the Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation by the Bland Cromwell family, those friendly neighbors

who allowed Griffin and other kids to use the property for fun and games. It is supposed to be

a park and it says restricted. Griffin and her brother sued blueprint data centers seeking a

temporary injunction to stop the project and they wanted the deed enforced so the land could be a

A Williamson County judge denied the injunction and threw out the case

This is not good for Texas. If they can just bypass a deed of what somebody said, it hurts all of us

Not even hurting First and Second Avenue on Royal Street. It hurts the whole Texas

The property in question was sold multiple times, eventually landing in the portfolio of the Taylor Economic Development Corporation

Then it was sold to Blueprint Data Centers. Blueprint Data Centers did not respond to a request for an interview

Were you ever aware of any restrictions saying that this is supposed to be Parkland

Never. Never. Okay. Never was aware. Never had even heard of it

That's why you have title insurance companies review everything. You have attorneys review everything. It never came up

Taylor Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Ben White says despite data centers not creating many full jobs there are benefits to growing cities We need funds for quality of life and for roads and for infrastructure

You know, a project like this could provide the city $25, $35 million over the next 10 years to help fund those things

So you want improved parks? We need more police officers. We need another fire station

We need more firefighters. We need improved roads. and we need improved water

In addition to city services, White said the property tax revenue from the data center

will also help local schools with up to $25 million over 10 years

And White hopes the community sees the benefit in hindsight. You know, I wish there was, you know

that group of citizens that are nearby had more of a buy-in on what it's going to do

for that area and help it. We're very comfortable in everything we did, and we feel like we did everything correct us

While advocates like White promote a promise of future prosperity, residents like Pamela Griffin are left with the memories of the construction site

as a gathering place for neighborhood kids. We used to all play with everybody, and everybody knew about First and First

If you talk to some people and tell them, oh, I know we're First and Second Avenue

I used to play over there. A lot of them used to tell them they used to play over here

And it's just, it just, it breaks my heart. Since discovering the deed, she believes Frank Rae Cromwell, the previous owner

meant for the land to be a park, even if the judge didn't agree that it could be enforced

Griffin and her lawyer are filing an appeal. I would cry every night

I'd see a big old, big old builder sitting there. and I'd be crying because I know now that this man

this man gave it to us. He said he did it. He told my dad and he did it

And that's the thing. We got a big old data center. Ain't nobody gonna wanna stay here

For Straight Arrow News, I'm Keaton Peters. For more on this story

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