While the biggest technology companies race to build ever larger AI data centers, the towns being asked to host them have started saying no. A report from Data Center Watch, a project of the AI research firm 10a Labs, found that local opposition blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion in the first three months of 2026. That is the most in any quarter since the group began tracking in 2023, and it roughly equals the total for all of last year, packed into ninety days.
The resistance is no longer scattered. Data Center Watch counted more than 833 active opposition groups across 49 states, more than double the number a year earlier. Lawmakers filed over 300 data center bills in the first six weeks of 2026 alone, and fourteen states floated outright moratoriums on new construction. Maryland, Ohio, and Texas drew the most organised pushback.
What people are actually worried about
The complaints are practical rather than ideological. A large data center can draw as much power as a small city, and residents fear the grid upgrades will land on their own utility bills. Water is the other flashpoint. Many facilities cool their servers with millions of gallons a year, a hard sell in places already rationing through dry summers.
Tucson, Arizona became the emblem of the movement last August, when its city council voted unanimously to reject Amazon's $3.6 billion Project Blue campus. The plan would have used roughly 2,000 acre-feet of city water a year, enough to make it the single biggest water user in town. In Indianapolis, Google walked away from a $1 billion project moments before a council vote it looked set to lose.
A structural shift, not a mood
Data Center Watch framed the quarter as a change in kind, not a passing spike. Communities have learned from one another and now share a common playbook, and statehouses have turned from handing out incentives to writing rules. The Brookings Institution, in its own analysis, called the trend the opening round of a longer fight over who pays for the electricity that AI demands.
The pressure is already bending where the money goes. Some developers now court local approval before breaking ground rather than after, and others are looking abroad. Meta's decision to build a $13 billion plant in Alberta, with its no-operational-water cooling and renewable-power pledges front and centre, reads in part as an answer to exactly these objections. The industry has heard the complaints. The open question is whether answering them is cheaper than fighting them at home.
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