The residents of Peculiar, Missouri, celebrated their victory against a proposed data center on an October night in 2024, after the town’s six-person Board of Aldermen unanimously voted down a proposal to rezone land for a 500-acre data center campus.
Peculiar, a town of 3,000 people about 40 minutes southwest of Kansas City, was among the earliest documented communities in the country to defeat a data center development through grassroots pushback.
Under the rallying cry, “Don’t Dump Data on Peculiar,” opponents voiced their concerns on a Facebook Page, planted signs in their front yards, and raised their voices in opposition to the development company Diode Ventures at aldermen meetings.
“You’re not going to stop progress,” Glenn Yoakum, who runs a farm feed store in downtown Peculiar, told the New York Times. “But they should make sure it’s at least a good deal for the town.”
Communities around the Midwest are following Peculiar’s lead by organizing opposition and urging their local officials to stop or pause data center development — or at least develop strong regulations for them.
“I am not against growth,” said Lauren Albers, a resident of Festus, Missouri, who opposed a data center there in March. “I'm against putting data centers between homes. I am against rushing into development before residents get real information, real answers and a real voice.”
That month, Festus residents voted most of that town’s pro-data center city council members out of office.
The opposition to data centers stems from many concerns. People worry the centers will deplete local water supplies because they require hundreds of thousands of gallons of it each day to stay cool. They worry about data centers pushing up the cost of electricity and straining electrical grids. Others fear the impact of large-scale construction projects on their property values and worry about the noise. Emerging research indicates that data centers often land in communities already burdened by air and water pollution.
Jacob Montgomery, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said that general unease about artificial intelligence, which relies on data centers, is also part of the pushback.
“There's a broader hesitancy about AI itself,” he said. “I think the sentiment out there is, ‘Why are we allowing these facilities to be built in our neighborhoods to benefit billionaires out in Silicon Valley?’”
Polling shows opposition to data centers is increasingly bipartisan. In March, Gallup conducted a survey that found seven in 10 Americans oppose building data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area. While Democrats are more likely to oppose data centers, a Politico survey showed more Republicans changing their positions between January and July.
“On the left, there's concerns about the environment, water, energy, climate,” Montgomery said. “On the right, it's about property rights and local control and utility bills.”
Caught between the people who elected them and big tech, local officials have found themselves in the crosshairs of powerful competing interests. And because states have been slow to implement regulations, municipal and county leaders have been left to play catch-up.
“These projects are moving very quickly,” Montgomery said, “and many places simply aren't ready. The sheer scale of the amount of capital investment going into this sector is enormous, and it means that across a variety of areas, regulation is not keeping up with what's happening on the ground.”
According to its own disclosures, Alphabet, Google's parent company, projects its total capital expenditures for 2026 to reach between $195 billion and $205 billion, with the vast majority dedicated to building data centers and AI infrastructure. Microsoft said it spent $41 billion on capital expenditures, including data centers, in April, May and June, which was up 69% from a year earlier.
“I think it's understandable that officials were caught a bit off guard,” Montgomery said. “Bringing tech companies to your region, having investments in a new growth industry — this is what we normally really want from elected officials.”
But as data centers proliferate, he said, “grassroots groups are starting all over the country.”
These groups are often composed of people who, under other circumstances, might not be allied, said Robin Saywitz, a political science professor at St. Louis University.
“We have this coming together of people who have long been passionate advocates for the environment,” she said. “You have people who are concerned about what it's going to do to their water bill. You have people who are worried about the noise level. And then you also have a coming together of people who are anti-tech.”
In May, the New York Times ran a headline that called data centers “the most bipartisan issue since beer.”
The rush to regulate
Various estimates put the number of existing data centers across the country at between 3,500 and 4,000, with roughly another 4,000 being planned. According to the Pew Research Center, most planned construction of data centers will happen in the Midwest and South.
Data center developers are eyeing rural areas because they can find large properties at low costs. According to Pew, 67% of planned data centers are in rural areas, while 87% of existing data centers are in urban ones. Meanwhile, 39% of planned data centers are in counties that currently don’t have any.
And the speed at which data centers have developed has often outpaced local readiness and regulations.
In Nebraska, Otoe County commissioners passed a moratorium on data centers in May. As reported by The Flatwater Free Press, the commissioners voted to suspend the permits needed for a new data center for up to a year to give county officials more time to study the issue and update its regulations. Residents at the meeting summed up a number of issues that will require new rules: zoning, permits, electricity and water usage among them.
In Tonganoxie, Kansas, the proposed Project Bluestem data center would cover about 1,000 acres south of the town. KCUR reported in August that around 100 people opposed to the project filled the Leavenworth County planning meeting room to call for more scrutiny of regulations.
“The people of Leavenworth County are smart,” resident John Wickey said. ”They realize, understand, and appreciate that you have immense power to write the rules in such a way that protects them, our communities and our way of life.”
In September 2025, Google approached Linn County, Iowa, officials about building a data center there before the county had regulations in place. The board of supervisors proceeded to draft a data center ordinance, which passed in February 2026.
“Something that we heard over and over again from residents is that water is a critical resource — especially in this state, where we're seeing a water-quality crisis," said Linn County District 2 Supervisor Sami Scheetz. "We want to make sure that we have the resources to supply water for these projects that are going to create, potentially, billions of dollars in profit for some of the largest companies in the world, like Google."
According to Iowa Public Radio, Google changed its mind and said it wanted to build in the town of Palo, population about 1,600. The company said it would do so through annexation, incorporating the county site into the city.
A cost to public trust
Across the region, opposition to data centers has grown over what community members perceive as secrecy. In many cases, local officials and residents have been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements that bar them from discussing details publicly.
“One of the drivers, in fact, to the opposition appears to be that they're often negotiated behind closed doors,” said Montgomery, the Washington University professor. “These companies say that confidentiality is a competitive necessity — and there's something to that, I think. But it comes at a real cost in terms of public trust.”
The issue of trust in local elected officials came to a head in St. Charles, Missouri, in August 2025, when St. Louis Public Radio reported that residents tried to learn the identity of a company that was behind a proposed 440-acre data center.
“How in the world can you work for the citizens of St. Charles and not be able to discuss this project with them before you take a vote on it?” asked Tim Kline, a local farmer.
In August 2026, the St. Charles City Council unanimously passed a one-year moratorium on new data center applications. The unnamed data center was eventually tied to Google.
Data center opponents in Linn County, Iowa, and the town of Palo suggested that Google’s idea to annex part of Palo arose in discussions that happened behind closed doors.
“There is absolutely no way that this big, successful company did that unless they thought or knew they would get a better deal with Palo,” Brown said. “There’s no reason.”
Palo Mayor Bryan Busch denied there was anything amiss behind the Google decision.
“Any insinuation that somebody’s just going to sort of override or bulldoze Palo, or bully Palo, or anything like that, is discrediting,” he said. “Just being very honest with you.”
Support for data centers
Data center developers and local elected officials frequently point to economic development when discussing the benefits of data centers.
“It's the jobs, it's the tax revenues, it's the construction jobs that are coming,” said Korb Maxwell, a lawyer representing the St. Charles project. “It's the look towards the new economy that is going to happen whether folks want it or not. You know, America is changing, and the economy is digitizing further and further.”
But so far, Montgomery said, most jobs associated with data centers have been short-term.
“There can be hundreds or thousands of people employed at various parts in the development of the data center,” he said. “In the longer run, these facilities are highly automated and often don't produce many long-term jobs.”
Depending on the size of the facility, estimates range from dozens to hundreds of permanent jobs.
“I don't think we get to live in a world where there's just no more data centers built. There's always going to be a community that's willing to say 'yes.'”Robin Saywitch, St. Louis University political science professor
Communities are weighing whether those numbers of new jobs will make a difference to local economies, said Robin Saywitch, the St. Louis University professor.
“For some communities, they (are) going to radically transform the workforce of the area,” she said. “One of the data centers is being built in New Florence, Missouri. They have a population of 700. If you add 200 jobs that’s a big change.”
Support for data centers can also sometimes come from local residents themselves.
At a board of commissioners meeting in Otoe County, Nebraska, resident Jim Nemec wondered in May if fellow residents were having a “knee-jerk reaction” to development.
“Maybe we need to say ‘yes’ to a few things,” he said, noting he understood the need for a temporary ban to study the issue. “But I also worry about the intention or impression it gives. Are we sending out the impression that business is closed here?”
Montgomery said local elected officials are considering other data center benefits to communities, too, including generating tax revenue and sharing the cost of local infrastructure.
“There's no question that, in the long run, many of these data centers are going to be built,” he said. “The real question is whether they're going to be built in a way and in a location where the neighbors feel like they're benefiting from the investments as well, and not just the companies that built them.”
Finding a way forward
Pointing to recent efforts in Illinois, Saywitch said state and local governments could capitalize on data center developers’ interest in the region by requiring investments in renewable energy and enforcing strict water usage regulations.
In early 2026, Illinois Democratic state Rep. Carol Ammons introduced the POWER Act, which would require developers to pay for their own renewable energy generation and grid upgrades. The bill would also force data centers to make their water usage public and mandate permits that require certain water-efficiency standards.The POWER Act did not pass this spring, but the bill’s sponsors say negotiations will continue.
“There is an opportunity for creative and enterprising policymakers to pass some laws where, maybe you are getting a data center that you don't want, but maybe you get to build enough renewable energy that you can close down a coal-fire power plant that your community also doesn't want,” Saywitch said.
With broad swaths of the electorate skeptical, if not stridently opposed, to data center development, elected leaders at the state level are weighing their positions. According to CNBC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has warned data centers are a “sleeper issue” for the midterm election.
In August, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, signed an executive order that rescinds a package of tax incentives for data centers.
“I fully support the need for computational services that enable us to stay ahead in the race for artificial intelligence as well as the defense of our nation. To support those initiatives, data centers are a necessity,” he wrote in a message on his website. “However, we cannot foot the bill for them. These billion-dollar companies are well-positioned to pay their own way. Not only that, but we also can’t afford projects that deplete our natural resources. That’s another cost our state cannot bear, now or in the future.”
Illinois’ Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker recently halted tax incentives for data centers, a reversal from legislation he signed in 2019.
Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe of Missouri has repeatedly pointed toward data centers as a big part of his state’s economic future, calling the developments "transformative investments.”
“There's still clearly governors thinking about data centers as something they want to attract, rather than purely restrict,” Montgomery said. “That said, the political winds seem to be shifting. Neither party's base is super supportive, and the public is, in general, pretty hostile to these facilities.”
Saywitch said as dramatic as the politics of data centers may seem now, elected leaders may find even more fraught days ahead.
When they get down to the business of crafting regulations, she said, they will need to appease environmentalists, property rights proponents, big tech foes and consumer advocates alike.
“Their ideal preferences don't align, but it's really easy right now for them to all say, ‘We hate this, we need to pause it, we need to study it, we need to think about this more,’” Saywitch said.
The Midwest Newsroom is an enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here. The Midwest Newsroom is a partner of The Trust Project. We invite you to review our ethics and practices here.
METHODOLOGY
Holly Edgell interviewed two political scientists to gain insights into how residents of Midwestern states, elected officials and big data companies are colliding over new data center development in the region. She reviewed polls and data from national and regional sources to provide context about the economic, social and political impact of the surge in new constructions of these facilities. She also reviewed news coverage from local and national sources to provide examples of how communities have used their voting power and grassroots tactics to halt and prevent new data centers from being built.
REFERENCES
Data Centers in the United States (Cleanview | August 2026)
Track data centers and power projects from the first permit to final completion (Cleanview | August 2026)
Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting (August 2026)
A growing political reckoning is coming for data centers, POLITICO Poll shows (POLITICO | July 21, 2026)
Americans Oppose AI Data Centers in Their Area (Gallup | May 13, 2026)
From Energy Use to Air Quality, the Many Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities (World Resources Institute | Feb. 17, 2026)
Peculiar officials in Missouri remove data centers from ordinance, blocking $1.5bn Diode project (Data Center Dynamics | Oct. 23, 2024)
TYPE OF ARTICLE
News — Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
