Fifteen minutes after Susan Bourgeois was appointed to lead Louisiana Economic Development, the state agency responsible for strengthening business growth, she got her first data center pitch.
"I was pulled aside in the lobby of the Hilton hotel by the CEO of Entergy Louisiana, who said, 'We have a project and need to talk,'" Bourgeois said.
It was a proposal from Meta to build one of the largest-ever AI data centers in the world. Bourgeois jumped on it. Data centers, which are large warehouses full of servers that power parts of the internet and increasingly artificial intelligence, infuse massive amounts of capital into communities and are much needed in rural areas where populations are declining, she said.
That was in 2024. Since then, the demand for AI and the colossal computing power it requires has only grown. Technology companies are building data centers across the United States at an unprecedented pace. Business demands, consumer usage and even U.S. government investment are all propelling the boom.
But the strain they place on the physical environment — from energy to the environment to aesthetics — has ignited fierce opposition in many communities across the country. It has become a voting issue for many people ahead of the midterm elections.
"It has become a kitchen table issue, and it has become a very relevant political issue," said Christabel Randolph, associate director of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, a technology nonprofit that promotes fairness and accountability.
"Tech companies coming to build in their backyard is going to increase their bills," she said, "all of those things that ordinary Americans understand as impacting their affordability."
And people are looking to their elected officials to hold these tech companies at bay.
"I really don't understand why they would want to come into a community where they're not wanted," Mike Trentham, who lives across the street from a proposed data center development in rural Tennessee, told WUOT. "I think [the county] should fight it. And I hope they do."
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In the absence of meaningful legislation at the federal level, and with most states still developing regulations, local governments have found themselves grappling with the data center boom, said Julie Bolthouse, director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council, a Virginia-based conservation nonprofit that has been involved in the issue there.
"It is very much a Wild West," she said. "[Local governments] are really the only ones who can turn down a data center project, and so a locality is going to evaluate a data center the same way they evaluate a Walmart or a residential housing development."
Voters turn up the heat on elected officials
Opposition to data centers has spilled out from feisty local Facebook group comments to fiery, hourslong city commission and town hall meetings, where crowds of angry residents take their turn to lambaste proposed sites. Some cities have had to move their meetings outdoors to accommodate everyone who wants to attend.
They have a litany of concerns, including noise, power demands, pollution, unsustainable water needs, environmental degradation and secrecy in how the data center deals are conducted.
Since Meta began construction on the data center in Louisiana, residents have complained that their water is "brown" or "like rust" and smells like "disinfectant." Many people in town now drink only bottled water, WWNO reported.
Residents who feel their concerns are being ignored are making their displeasure known at the ballot box.
In the small town of Festus, Mo., near St. Louis, four city council members recently lost their seats over their support of a $6 billion data center, St. Louis Public Radio reported.
On the other side of the state, in Independence, two councilmembers there were voted out of office after supporting a tax break for a large data center, according to KCUR.
In rural North Carolina, Vietnam War veteran David Batts went before the Edgecombe County Board of Commissioners and issued a threat. "We will primary you," he told commissioners when they approved a data center near his home, according to WUNC. He then unseated a four-term incumbent in March's Democratic primary.
State legislatures across the country have taken up bills in response to their constituents' pushback on data centers — they range from eliminating tax incentives to an outright moratorium.
These data centers have been built in nearly every state in the country. And unlike many issues, the opposition toward them often cuts across party lines.
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Maine's Democratic-controlled Legislature approved a pause on most data center construction — the strongest action taken against data centers at the state level.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida argued for regulations around data centers.
" You should not have to pay one dime more in utility costs, water, power, any of this stuff, because these are some of the most wealthy companies in the history of humanity," DeSantis said during a roundtable discussion on AI, according to WLRN.
The Florida Legislature passed a bill to put guardrails in place on data centers' water and energy usage and to regulate where they can and cannot be built.
All the money is hard to pass up
Data center developments can bring massive amounts of money to local communities, mostly in construction jobs and property taxes. Bourgeois, of Louisiana's economic development agency, said that Meta's investment in the Richland Parish project amounts to $1.3 billion in construction wages and nearly $1 billion in tax revenue over five years.
And to get that investment, states hand out lucrative tax incentives. North Carolina has given data centers a sales tax exemption on the electricity they use. Some states, like Georgia, give data centers a sales tax break on the computing equipment they buy to make the centers run.
Chris Clark, president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, said data centers are especially attractive for rural areas: They don't require a large workforce to operate, and they don't stress the housing supply or school systems. It's a lifeline for the state's aging rural population.
"Where I live, they're building one of the largest data centers in the world right now, and it will generate more property tax value than all of us that live in the county combined," he said.
A rural community in south Georgia that lost its biggest employer last year and 70% of its tax base is now recruiting a data center, according to Clark.
"That data center could probably be the thing that helps that community survive long term," he said.
In Port Washington, Wis., local leaders are welcoming data centers with open arms — they wrote a special zoning code to facilitate construction of the centers.
"So people will ask me, 'What keeps me up at night?' It's not the data center. It's what if we don't have development?" Mayor Ted Neitzke told WUWM. "What happens to the high school I graduated from? What happens to the quality of our roads? And we've been keeping it together on a shoestring."
In Oklahoma, Coweta City Manager Julie Casteen said data centers planned there would give a much-needed boost to the local school system.
"It will be a win for the school district," Casteen told KOSU. "They're probably the biggest winner, I would say, in all this."
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Virginia is ground zero for data centers, but opposition is mounting
Virginia, the state with the most data centers by far, is considering walking back some measures that made the state so attractive for investment. The state Senate put forward a budget that would eliminate the sales tax exemption for data centers, which has reached about $1.9 billion in the state. The plan has gained bipartisan traction, but it's still a very contentious subject in the state.
"It could also call Virginia's reliability as a partner for all industries into question and weaken the Commonwealth's competitive advantage," Keith Martin, interim president and CEO of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, told NPR in a statement. "At a time when economic competition is intensifying, disrupting these agreements could undermine what made Virginia the best state for business."
The Sierra Club estimates that nearly 1,300 data centers are either built or in the development pipeline in Virginia — totaling about 390 million square feet.
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On the national level, President Trump has supported data center development but has also acknowledged the pain that data centers are causing some communities.
In July, he issued an executive order to accelerate federal permitting of data center infrastructure. But in March, he announced the "Ratepayer Protection Pledge," calling on AI companies to build, bring or buy all the energy needed for building and operating data centers and to "protect American consumers from price hikes." He also released a "National AI Legislative Framework" to suggest how Congress should codify it.
Policy analysts say Trump's moves are an indication the administration recognizes data centers as an affordability concern. But so far, his plans don't have any teeth.
"The enforcement mechanisms are so weak," said Ronnie Kinoshita, deputy director of data science and research at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. "The plan is not regulation. It's not an executive order. It's a nonbinding list of recommendations to Congress and contains no directives for the executive branch."
But she said the administration's interest shows the data center debate has grown from a local to national issue and will be relevant to this year's midterm elections. Bolthouse, of the Piedmont Environmental Council, said politicians are realizing that data centers are a key voting issue for their constituents.
"It is becoming harder and harder for our elected officials to turn a blind eye," she said.
METHODOLOGY: Data center locations were sourced from Data Center Map (snapshot as of March 19, 2026). We used a Python script to spatially match each site to 2025 congressional districts using Census TIGER/Line shapefiles. Boundaries reflect the 119th Congress and may not capture changes ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Counts include operational and planned facilities. Party affiliation was sourced from House.gov; for vacant seats, we used the most recent officeholder's party.
Copyright 2026 NPR
