A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Data centers are the new hot-button issue in local government. We're talking about those massive buildings that house lots of computers to support the AI boom. And the new construction to build all of them is getting a lot of community pushback across the U.S. The Indicator's Darian Woods and Michigan Public's Dustin Dwyer went to one small town in Michigan, Pavilion Township, where one of those fights is playing out.
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: Data centers can use a lot of water, like, hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons a day, as much as a city.
DUSTIN DWYER, BYLINE: Yeah. It depends on the design of the data center, but the water is mostly used for cooling the computers. And Michigan has a lot of water. We're surrounded by the Great Lakes. But folks here are concerned that the proposal does not forbid using the community's drinking water.
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ELIZABETH CLARK: We are not all on the same side of a lot of issues.
DWYER: This is Elizabeth Clark (ph).
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CLARK: We're all here on the same side of this one because we all know that we can't live for seven days without drinkable water.
DWYER: There are people who've been trying to push more data centers in Michigan, including our governor, because of the investment, the tax revenues that can flood in from a massive data center. But the people here are not sure it's worth it. At the meeting, this one guy, David Souton (ph), he said, it's all risk, no benefit.
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DAVID SOUTON: It won't bring tourism. It won't bring jobs. It brings nothing.
WOODS: Sounds like it's exaggerating a little bit. You know, tax revenue can bring in a lot of money. I've seen some places using that to pay for local services. And it's not true there are no jobs. There are jobs, at least initially, during the construction of the data center.
DWYER: Right, initially. Although it is worth mentioning, there's some research out there that these benefits don't always outweigh the downsides. Either way, the potential benefits are what's pushing data centers forward in a lot of communities.
WOODS: According to the group, Data Center Watch, more than $64 billion in data center investment over the past year was blocked or delayed nationwide because of local opposition.
DWYER: Yeah. And here in Michigan, just in the past couple of months, at least three local communities have had significant pushback against data centers coming in.
WOODS: So the local opposition could stop individual projects. It could slow down the overall buildout, but could it really kill this AI data center boom nationwide?
DWYER: Maybe not. But it could change the approach companies might take to data centers, according to Vijay Gadepally, who's at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, and he runs a couple of startups.
VIJAY GADEPALLY: I don't think development will grind to a halt. There's too many economic reasons for it - at least in the near term, for it to grind to a halt.
WOODS: The consulting firm McKinsey & Company has estimated that companies will spend $7 trillion globally over the next five years building out data centers.
GADEPALLY: Now that there is some pushback on construction and, you know, either it's becoming more difficult to get new builds or it's becoming more expensive, I think that math is starting to shift again where people are like, OK, well, let's just look at the existing asset and can we get more out of.
DWYER: He sees a lot of opportunity to squeeze out a lot more computational power out of the data centers that already exist. The alternative is more of what we've seen so far. A lot of these hyperscale data centers have started bringing in their own temporary power, like natural gas generators and fuel cells.
WOODS: And that probably would not go well in places like Pavilion Township, either.
DWYER: No. It definitely, definitely would not. Dustin Dwyer.
WOODS: Darian Woods, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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