Just north of Milwaukee, amid cornfields, rolling hills, barns and grain silos, there's a stunning sight: a massive data center under construction, covering two-and-a-half-million square feet of former farmland and stretching toward the horizon.
This emerging hyperscale complex in Port Washington, Wisconsin, has torn up the land and torn up this community. It's a local story that's also playing out nationally, as artificial intelligence companies race to build data centers to power their AI models – and people increasingly protest their construction.
NPR visited the site of the future Port Washington data center, called Project Lighthouse, and spoke with residents leading a crusade against it. We also met with the small city's mayor, who may be the data center's biggest champion.
Port Washington's gargantuan project has led to angry protests, multiple lawsuits, and opponents arrested for civil disobedience. Supporters say data centers will keep the United States competitive and could bring great wealth to places where they're built. But many residents feel frightened and helpless as they watch this rapid change, including 67-year-old Amanda Mueller.
"There should be a buffer zone around data centers, and it should be within at least a mile of a data center," she told NPR. "You should not have residents living anywhere near it. There has to be guardrails."
Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke says adequate guardrails have been put in place.
"Honestly, if you did your diligence, I don't understand why a community like ours, who grew up [with] an industrial base, would fight the fact that we would need this back again," Neitzke said.
But there are still many questions about Project Lighthouse, being built by Vantage Data Centers in partnership with Oracle and OpenAI – questions that even its strongest proponents aren't able to answer.
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