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Lenoxdatacenter.com went live in May, promoting what it called a “proposed advanced technology and data center campus” in Michigan. The site did not state who wanted to build the center. Lenox Township officials denied anyone had applied to build one.

Emails obtained by residents through an open records request showed, however, that developers had contacted the township supervisor and deputy supervisor asking for their support to build a datacenter.

The perceived secrecy surrounding the proposed datacenter prompted residents to pack public meetings that sometimes lasted more than four hours. They expressed outrage at officials in the Republican-led rural municipality 40 miles (64km) north of Detroit and submitted a petition seeking to recall four members of the Lenox board of trustees, which oversees township administration, zoning and municipal ordinances.

“The community still has questions that aren’t being answered and the public deserves to have transparency,” a resident said at a June board meeting after the trustees did not extend a four-month moratorium on datacenter development.

Like Lenox residents, people across the United States are increasingly pushing for moratoriums on new datacenters and trying to oust elected officials approving such projects.

Supporters say the movement is encouraging, not only because it could slow an industry they argue will diminish their property values, strain water and energy resources and cause greater unemployment, but also because it features a phenomenon that is nearing extinction in American politics: unity among Republicans and Democrats.

“It reflects the growing anxiety about AI writ large,” said Evan Sutton, a Seattle resident who works in strategic communications and has voluntarily helped datacenter opponents in 10 states, including California, Montana and Ohio. “People feel like this technology is being shoved down our throats.”

The US has more than 4,400 datacenters, according to Data Center Map, and one center can consume as much electricity as 2,000 homes, according to a University of Michigan report. They also require water for cooling, and a typical datacenter uses 300,000 gallons of water each day (equivalent to the demands of about 1,000 households), but large datacenters can use an estimated 5m gallons of water each day, equivalent to the daily usage of a town with about 10,000 to 50,000 residents, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

That consumption can strain a local water supply – particularly in arid areas – and electric grid capacity, which means utilities then must invest in infrastructure upgrades and charge consumers more.

The effects of datacenters are especially acute for people who live close to them. Neighbors often complain about constant humming from the facilities’ cooling systems, and air pollution.

When companies try to build new ones, industry analysts say they frequently do so clandestinely without revealing which tech firm would use the facilities. Researchers found that among 31 Virginia localities with existing, approved or proposed datacenters, 80% had non-disclosure agreements with the companies behind the projects, the Virginia Mercury reported.

For those reasons, Democrats and Republicans increasingly don’t want datacenters in their backyards.

During the first quarter of 2026, at least 75 datacenter projects that would have been worth about $130bn were blocked or delayed – about the same amount as all of 2025, according to Data Center Watch, a firm that tracks such opposition.

In just May and June, voters in states including California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas launched efforts to recall elected officials over their handling of datacenter proposals.

“Many Democrats, especially those that are very environmentally minded, are deeply concerned about not just the energy use, but the use of polluting forms of electricity, like the re-invigoration of coal-fired power plants,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, “whereas Republicans and, frankly, many Democrats as well, are concerned about the potential economic consequences, especially on their own electricity and energy bills.”

In Festus, Missouri, located in a county where Donald Trump won 67% of the vote in 2024, residents filed a petition to recall the mayor and three council members over their approval of a $6bn datacenter agreement with CRG Clayco.

The developer had shifted focus to Festus after residents in nearby St Charles expressed strong opposition to a proposed project and voted to ban datacenters. In both cases, the developer would not reveal which tech company would operate the datacenter.

“The company usually goes public only after the decisive votes have been taken,” said Michael Bommarito, an entrepreneur and the author of How to Fight a Data Center.

Still, the Festus city council approved the agreement, which included the city’s support for a five-year personal property tax abatement with the surrounding county for the developer. The mayor said the datacenter would provide “tremendous benefits to the people of Festus”.

Even though a judge determined the voters had obtained enough signatures to trigger a recall election, the city council rejected the petition. A resident, Dennis McDonald, has filed a legal challenge to the council’s decision. The Festus council members facing a recall election declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

If “the community says: ‘Hey, we want to be involved and know what is going on here,’ and you just don’t involve them at every turn, it ends up building into where we are at now,” said McDonald, a Festus resident who teaches US history at a local college, delivers pizza and was a Democratic candidate for the Missouri statehouse in 2018.

Despite thinking that what the developers are doing is “terrible”, McDonald said, he was inspired by the cooperation among residents.

“I met a ton of people that I never would have met, and they have done amazing work and talked to their neighbors and knocked on their doors,” McDonald said.

In Yukon, Oklahoma, Joe Horn, a Republican and bank vice-president, filed a petition to recall the mayor and vice-mayor over their support for a proposed $1bn datacenter. Horn, who ran for city council in 2024, had concerns about an alleged lack of transparency and water usage.

“We already ration water here in Yukon,” Horn said. “At what cost are we going to have this huge industrial building right across the street from one of our most beautiful neighborhoods?”

In May 2025, the city manager signed a non-disclosure agreement with Beltline Energy, a Georgia company, over a proposed deal. The city council voted four to one to sell the land to Beltline.

Following the recall petition, Jeff Wootton, the Yukon vice-mayor, resigned. In nearby Luther, Oklahoma, the mayor had also been in discussion with Beltline about a deal and signed an NDA, but after seeing the backlash in Yukon, the city council in June passed a six-month moratorium on datacenter development.

Wootton said he believed the datacenter could “bring significant long-term economic benefits to Yukon”.

“The intent was never to conceal information from the public indefinitely but rather to protect sensitive negotiations during the preliminary stages while the city evaluated the proposal responsibly and within the proper legal framework,” Wootton said. “That said, I also believe public trust is critical, and when citizens feel they are not receiving enough information, elected officials have a responsibility to communicate more clearly, more proactively.”

Despite some Republicans’ opposition, the Trump administration has pushed for fast construction of datacenters. Investors and Republicans have claimed the Chinese Communist party propaganda on social media is driving the resistance.

Kevin O’Leary, a Shark Tank star, claimed on Fox News earlier this year that opponents of his datacenter project in Utah were fueled by China. In contrast, experts have said there is little evidence that China is covertly driving datacenter opposition efforts. More recently, O’Leary admitted he had no evidence that his opponents were funded by China. Fox News hosts also issued several on-air apologies in June for airing his claims.

Meanwhile, as datacenter critics have alleged, it’s not always clear who stands to gain from projects such as the proposed datacenter in Lenox Township.

While Lenoxdatacenter.com did not disclose who wanted to build the facility, a review of the website’s source code showed that it was powered by One Click Politics, a political advocacy software company. According to research from Bommarito confirmed by the Guardian, the account paying for the campaign was an email address connected to Sabrina Bachwich, chief operating officer of Grassroots Midwest. When asked whether her firm created the website, Bachwich denied it in a text message. When the Guardian provided additional evidence, she stopped responding.

The effort also appears to have stalled. A part of the website that had encouraged people to contact the township board now states: “This campaign has ended and is no longer taking action.”