DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
A little more than a month out from the midterm elections, one issue is uniting voters.
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SCOTT NEUMAN, BYLINE: Across the country, local leaders are being held to account over allowing data centers that deliver more tax revenue but also bring a host of concerns over electricity demand and water consumption.
ELLIOTT: That's NPR's Scott Neuman, reporting earlier this week on the growing movement against data centers. In his reporting, Scott came across Maryland farmer Steve Black.
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NEUMAN: About a mile from his farm, a new 2,000-acre data center is under construction. In November, he plans to support a diverse slate of local candidates with just one requirement - they must oppose data centers.
STEVE BLACK: Some people are Democrats that I'm supporting, and some are Republicans, and it no longer matters to me.
ELLIOTT: So for this week's Reporter's Notebook, we wanted to speak with Scott about what he learned covering this movement. I started by asking him what made him realize this opposition to data centers was becoming such an important story he wanted to dig into.
NEUMAN: Any part of the country, you could find these grassroots groups that were popping up on social media, and you could find local news stories that said, you know, the city council members who had signed nondisclosure agreements in some cases with AI developers or governments.
ELLIOTT: Yeah, I've run across that in my region, covering...
NEUMAN: Yeah.
ELLIOTT: ...Other stories.
NEUMAN: Exactly.
ELLIOTT: And you run into the activists, right?
NEUMAN: Right. So this is all over the country, this is going on. And the interesting thing is that you think of - you know, I think - and especially in the last, say, decade, people's minds have been kind of - like, at the national level, the - all the oxygen, you know, the political oxygen, has...
ELLIOTT: Right.
NEUMAN: ...Been at that level. And all of a sudden, you know, this is an issue that crosses party lines. It really challenges, like, traditional alliances on the local level. And you're seeing, like, people get engaged on the local level. Like, I haven't seen anything like that or that's taken off that quickly.
ELLIOTT: Kind of taking us back to that old adage, all politics is local, which...
NEUMAN: Exactly.
ELLIOTT: ...We haven't been able to say for - what?
NEUMAN: Right.
ELLIOTT: ...A decade now.
NEUMAN: Exactly.
ELLIOTT: So how did you pick where to tell this story from? Was there a particular community that seemed to be the perfect spot where all of the elements were there?
NEUMAN: Yeah, well, Loudoun County, Virginia, is kind of the epicenter of the whole data center thing. It's the highest concentration of data centers in the world, really...
ELLIOTT: Oh, OK.
NEUMAN: ...About 250 that are already built. There are, you know, dozens actually that are still in the pipeline, and it's starting to be seen by the rest of the country as this, you know, canary in the coal mine kind of poster child for AI rampant - unchecked AI data center development. And so that was an obvious place to go. And I went to visit a data center there and talked to residents who lived near it, and it was like, well, OK, so what's the counter-example? I wanted to find a couple of different places that were sort of at different stages in the AI buildout.
ELLIOTT: One of the people you spoke with was Darrell West, and he described what I think is a sentiment that we've been hearing more and more about with the rapid development.
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DARRELL WEST: People just feel like they no longer have control over the technology. That worries them. They worry about the impact on their children. They see technology as an existential threat.
ELLIOTT: You know, that powerless feeling and that fear is something that we have heard so much about in the last couple of weeks, especially with all these new warnings about where the technology is heading. How did that sentiment shape your approach to telling this story?
NEUMAN: Yeah, I mean, I think it was more like a - it's a reflection of the way that people are thinking about this issue. So you've got, like, the, you know, ground-level - the NiMBY issue, the not in my backyard. It's very local and actually very powerful because people really care about their own communities and what's going on in their own communities. So there's that.
I mean, people are concerned about, obviously, the things that we've heard about - the huge power consumption, power draw that these data centers have, the water that they are using for cooling - and actually, in some cases, the noise, which was an issue in Sterling.
But you've got that kind of level, and then you've got this other level, which is - I think the two are kind of dovetailing. They're kind of coming together, which is, you know, this - again, this, like, existential dread about AI. Is it going to take our jobs? Is it going to kill us? You know, either of those things is true or not, they're definitely starting to contribute to the way people are thinking about this issue. So it's not only, I don't want a data center in my backyard, but is AI...
ELLIOTT: Good for me, right?
NEUMAN: Is AI good for me? Right. But, you know, one interesting thing - I made a point of asking everybody I talked to - like, the most ardent - people who are the most ardent about opposition to data centers, do you personally use AI? I mean, of course, we all do when we're Googling or whatever. That comes up automatically. But make a point of, like, using a chatbot, like ChatGPT, for example.
ELLIOTT: And?
NEUMAN: Almost everybody said yes. And, you know, it was kind of a begrudging thing. It was kind of like, well, I use it sometimes, but I try not to use it too much. You know, there was a certain self-awareness that there was a little bit of hypocrisy there.
ELLIOTT: The reality that we live in, right?
NEUMAN: Exactly.
ELLIOTT: There was another person that stood out to me in your reporting, Hari Doue. Here's what she told you.
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HARI DOUE: My kids' room is right in the front of our house, and sometimes they've had issues falling asleep, especially when those generators are going off.
ELLIOTT: You know, my children are grown and out of the house now, but that really hit me. Like, how could you live and raise a family with that constant sound and drone right in your neighborhood? Were there other families that were concerned about this?
NEUMAN: Oh, yeah, everybody. Whenever you go into the field, you're kind of self-aware that you're making a special effort to go out here, and you want to make sure that you've got a few voices lined up to talk to. And I always get nervous 'cause sometimes I'm - you know, I'm - do I have enough people I want to talk to or whatever?
ELLIOTT: Right.
NEUMAN: I would have had no trouble next to this data - I mean, I got out of the car with my radio equipment, and within seconds, somebody waylaid me and wanted to tell me about how terrible it was living next to this data center. But the people who run these AI data centers, they're trying to stay within legal limits, obviously, when it comes to noise. And the noise is - when you get right up to the data center, it's pretty obnoxious, to be honest.
But you get a few hundred feet away where the houses are, and it's not really that bad on first blush, but it's always there, kind of in the background. And with Hari Doue, actually, I went in to talk to her in her house, and I kind of got used to the - and inside, it's not - you - really not - it's not enough that you can pick it up on the microphone, and you're - you just kind of - not noticing it. But the second I walked outside again, I noticed it.
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NEUMAN: And it's kind of a constant, low-level white-noise background. And it's got a couple of different frequency levels. It's like, there's this low-level kind of rumble, and then there's a little tinkly kind of, like, higher frequency thing going on. And it's - what it is, is it's the gas-fired turbines mostly - also some of the cooling systems, apparently. And then just while I was reporting the story, actually, they said that it would - basically said it would be years before they were able to get power in. So the people are going to have to live with that noise, you know, for a while.
ELLIOTT: Scott, how much of the distrust you encountered here was actually about AI, and how much of it would you say was the way the local governments have gone about approving these, sometimes without public input, and using these nondisclosure agreements, right?
NEUMAN: Yeah, I think that was kind of the salt in the wounds, really. I mean, the bottom line is, you know, you can talk to people that live near these data centers, and it's really, really difficult to find anybody who isn't opposed to it. And again, nobody wants to live next to a big, you know, gray box. But the secrecy is definitely part of the - a big part of the equation.
ELLIOTT: That's NPR's Scott Neuman. Thank you.
NEUMAN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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