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When you use AI like ChatGPT, or even when you Google something, your search is routed through a data center. These are giant warehouses for servers and data storage. And the world's highest concentration of data centers is in Virginia. But residents there are not happy about that. NPR's Emily Feng and Ryan Murphy from member station WHRO have this story.
AUTOMATED VOICE: In 600 feet, turn right.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: I'm going down one of the major interstate highways that crisscross northern Virginia. And driving with me is Elena Schlossberg, a data center opponent.
ELENA SCHLOSSBERG: Can you see the...
FENG: This big gray building?
SCHLOSSBERG: Yeah.
FENG: She's pointing out the huge data centers on both sides of the highway.
SCHLOSSBERG: We're sort of that model of how not to do this kind of industrial development.
FENG: A decade ago, Schlossberg learned Amazon Web Services was building a data center next to her home in northern Virginia. And she threw herself into stopping it.
SCHLOSSBERG: And the data center industry came and crushed us.
FENG: Amazon is among NPR's recent financial supporters and pays to distribute some NPR content. And they're one of several companies that have made Virginia an epicenter for data. Thirteen percent of all data centers in the world are here. That's been supercharged by AI products like ChatGPT that need computing power.
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FENG: So about 70 more data centers, many the size of multiple football fields, are planned in Virginia. The centers support our computing needs. They also need huge amounts of water and energy for cooling. In Virginia, one utility company alone, called Dominion, is contracted to build 40 gigawatts of energy capacity for these new centers. Julie Bolthouse at the Piedmont Environmental Council, a Virginia environment nonprofit, explains what that figure means.
JULIE BOLTHOUSE: To increase it by 40 gigawatts is to almost triple our entire grid for one industry. And to do that for one industry is absolutely unprecedented.
FENG: Triple the max power production currently for the entire state. The power, the land and the cost of these data centers has galvanized a not-in-my-backyard movement against them. And many activists around the country are seeking out Schlossberg about how to organize.
SCHLOSSBERG: I've talked to people in Boardman, Oregon. Peculiar, Missouri. Fort Wayne, Indiana. Maryland. Georgia.
FENG: One of the communities that recently came to her is in Chesapeake, Virginia, where my colleague, Ryan Murphy, has been attending town hall meetings.
RYAN MURPHY, BYLINE: Residents here learned of a proposed data center project just a few weeks ago, and they were concerned. Helen Messer's house is a couple hundred feet from where the data center would go. She's most worried about the very loud noise emitted by large-scale data centers.
HELEN MESSER: How am I going to relax with something buzzing at me 24/7?
MURPHY: Within days, Chesapeake residents held a meeting at a church social hall to prepare their resistance. The developer behind the data project, Doug Fuller, also showed up unexpectedly. He got a less than warm welcome from residents...
MESSER: How does this benefit our hearing? How does this benefit...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: How does this benefit pollution?
MESSER: Pollution.
MURPHY: ...Including Messer.
MESSER: Why can't we move the data centers to your neighborhood?
MURPHY: Fuller pushed back.
DOUG FULLER: Me as a developer will create an asset for our city. Tax revenues will be in the millions of dollars.
MURPHY: Local governments in southeastern Virginia have been trying to shift their economies away from tourism and shipbuilding. They've spent tens of millions of dollars on high-speed fiber optic networks in hopes of attracting high-tech businesses like data centers. Still, hundreds of residents implored local leaders to deny the proposal. Here's resident Lee DaMore (ph).
LEE DAMORE: Once they're built, there's nothing you can do, there's nothing you can do. If they violate the decibels, what are you going to do, fine them $1,000? You know, that'd be like me asking you for a penny. I mean, seriously. Once this thing is built, it's all over but the crying.
MURPHY: Opponents showed up in force to a June city council meeting.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Thank you. Members of council, please prepare to vote. Please vote, and Madam Clerk, record.
MURPHY: When the tallying board lit up to show a unanimous vote blocking the data center, the council chamber erupted.
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MURPHY: Messer and her neighbors were giddy as they poured out of city hall.
MESSER: I will sleep better than I have slept for in months.
MURPHY: As resistance has mounted and gotten organized, more data center projects are being delayed or outright rejected - 16 projects nationally between May of last year and this past March. But a central tension remains. Use of AI applications is skyrocketing, and the data centers to handle all of that have to go somewhere.
For NPR, I'm Ryan Murphy.
FENG: And I'm NPR's Emily Feng. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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