How Data Center Backlash is Reshaping Politics

0:00From KQED. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from San Francisco Opera. Manon is young, beautiful, and has a taste for the finer things. But when she suddenly falls in love, she must decide between what she values most. True love or a Parisian life of luxury. Massonais Manon on stage, October 15th through November 1st. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Stanford's Master of Liberal Arts program, inviting students on a part-time journey of ideas, culminating in a Stanford graduate degree. An info session will be held on October 22nd, mla.stanford.edu. Welcome to Forum, M.A.L.X.S. Madrigal. The headline of our guest, Molly Taf's story pretty much says it all. How data centers broke American politics. Because after years and years where every issue seemed to immediately separate into left and right, data centers somehow have scrambled everything.

1:02That's true nationally in states from Texas to Pennsylvania, Indiana to California. Is opposing data centers something Bernie Sanders would do? Or something Steve Bannon would do? Trick question actually they appeared at the same event, both opposing data centers. But data center politics are creating new coalitions locally too. We're suddenly data center politics, which look to me like a variation, environmental justice organizing. We're suddenly front and center in our industrial suburbs and excerpts. So that's today's show. Here to talk with us were joined by Abby Andre, co-executive director at the Impact Project. Welcome. Thanks so much. And we've got Molly Taf, senior climate reporter at Wired who's been covering the rise of data center opposition. Welcome Molly. Thanks for having me. So Molly just to set us up, I'm just going to quote back just a couple sentences of your story. In all my years of reporting on energy and the environment, I've never seen anything like the type of vitriol level that data centers or the near religious fury that has built up

2:02around their construction or the way this resistance seems to be uniting people from the complete opposite ends of the political spectrum. When I read that, I was like that exactly reflects my experience as well in reporting on these things. What happened? Like what in, so you know you forgot this new article out there's basically just like what happened? It's been so wild to watch the kind of growth of this issue. I think, you know, I started covering this at Wired when I came to the magazine more than a year or a half ago. And back then, the political landscape around data centers was, you know, it was limited to mostly local kind of fights. It was limited to mostly local folks showing up at community meetings. And that doesn't normally reach the national political level. You know, the Trump administration came in kind of guns blazing on American AI and data centers suddenly started cropping up in places where they hadn't traditionally been before. But I don't think politicians on either the left or the right were really prepared for

3:03a truly grassroots movement opposing their construction. And I always say you talk to 10 different data center protesters and you're going to get 10 different reasons why they oppose them, right? They're kind of a hard sell. It's a really big facility that does use a lot of energy, sometimes a lot of water, being built very rapidly, like getting, getting kind of runway to be built in ways that other infrastructure that might be more useful to people like housing or, you know, facilities that create new jobs might not be going up as fast. And then there's this sort of cult of secrecy that's surrounded a lot of these local projects, a lot of developers have used NDAs to push these through. So it's a little bit of a hard sell. And then also at the end of the day, there's the conversation about data centers and how they relate to AI. And this growing change that we're seeing across our society, across our economy, across kind of like what it means to be human. And so I'm really not surprised that this happened, but it has been really shocking to watch it

4:08go from an issue that barely anyone was talking about last spring and summer to one of the top political conversations as we had towards the midterms, like really reshaping all of this. It is wild. And like you said, you know, President Trump came in guns blazing on AI, but, you know, Josh Shapiro say out in Pennsylvania was wanted to have them develop Matt Mayhen here in San Jose. The mayor was sort of like clearing the way for more data center development. So it really was this sort of like bipartisan consensus, you know, that like, oh yeah, data centers are good. And so the center's add to property tax revenue, pay to centers, do all these things. And like you say, the surprise was that it really came from a wide variety of grassroots people who really had no central organization and don't still today really seem to have any central coordination. No, there's not, you know, I think that you can talk all you want about from the White House, for instance, there's been a very strong line of argument about a lot of this being

5:11attributable to China, which by the way, there's scant evidence that that's what's actually driving this conversation, right? This does seem to be really, really grassroots. But it is remarkable. I think it's been a while since we've seen an issue grow so organically out of community opposition folks organizing on Facebook. Facebook has been ironically like one of ground zeroes for folks in different communities to talk about these issues. People going to community meetings and asking questions about these projects. I've spoken with organizers who, you know, heard about a project coming to their town. They started looking into it at first. It was just them and maybe a couple other people. And now, you know, a year plus later, they're leading Facebook groups of thousands of people in opposition to data centers. They're advising other communities nearby about how to oppose these data centers. It really has grown from nowhere. And I think that that there was something that flipped this summer. I think there were a couple of different factors. One of them, I think, was the really national coverage we saw out in Utah when Mr. Wonderful

6:14tried to put up that data center and met with all sorts of fierce opposition. That seemed like a national news moment. You know, then there was the Republican Senate, editorial committee sending a memo to the party about the Senate race in Ohio and saying, listen, this is a sleeper issue. We are getting creamed on this and we need to start paying attention. So it feels like in August, a lot of things started tipping and you saw people like Josh Shapiro. You saw people like Greg Abbott, who's facing a tough re-election, kind of wake up and say, oh no, I need to look like, at least appear like I'm being harsher on the industry, you know, if not actually setting some real parameters on an industry that, you know, until very recently has been largely pretty unregulated, right? Yeah. I mean, Abby, you all have been tracking this at the impact project. And in particular, the way that governors or people running for office have been trying to like triangulate a position between what they were saying a year or two ago when it was economic development jobs, practice revenue, and now when they're facing this wave of sort

7:17of grassroots backlash. Yeah. We're seeing a really interesting dance between trying to balance the economic opportunity that lots of governors have seen and have demonstrated support for over the last five years with the real community environmental concerns and impacts that folks have articulated and that has contributed to making this a real lightning-right issue like Molly was saying. And what's interesting is, look, of course candidates can change their mind. More information arises and our own understanding of data centers has changed hugely in the last couple of years. But what we really wanted to look at as we saw these shifts were, you know, at least three things. One, are the governors promising something in these shifts that they can deliver on? You know, a day one plan when there's already laws on the books via the legislature providing

8:22tax incentives and signing India's at the community level, right? It's tricky. Governor doesn't actually have the power to walk back a lot of the inked deals that we are seeing. Nor are we seeing governors promise that. To, you know, are they offering to require data centers to disclose the data that we need to understand and regulate them largely hasn't been available? And then how quickly has the position changed? And across partisan lines, the candidates are doing really a variety of things across these issues, which does suggest, as you're saying, that there's a lot of tap dancing going on and triangulation going on as they try and weigh the pros and cons of an issue that is really complicated. Who has staked out kind of like the most hardcore position anti, would you say? I mean, I would say some of the most hardcore positions anti are the governors that you

9:28have seen from states that are predominantly and historically green, places where you're seeing folks who have always had support saying that you have to have community involvement. You cannot have these coming into these communities without consent. And in fact, I would say the California race is a really interesting case because communities have banned data centers in their own right, sometimes the first in the country. But the governor candidates are not coming out to say that they're going to support a ban or a moratorium. Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, what about the red leading states? Because you know, Molly was talking about earlier how this has kind of reshaped the kind of Ohio center race, or at least has a chance of doing so. I've also been kind of intrigued by opposition in places like Indiana.

10:29So how have traditionally pro business, more conservative states, how have their political figures tried to react to this? Yeah, governors in the governor race in Georgia is really interesting. There's been by some estimations, $12 or $13 million in data center ads through August, right? And so the Republican candidate is really interested in talking about a freeze and local control. But the Democratic candidate has come out much more strongly in support of being able to block any data center permit when you don't have community support. So there's frankly not always really clear communication, promises of day one freezes, but not promises of plans that back those up.

11:29Texas is another interesting one where the Republican Senate candidate has said that they're going to clamp down on development, but develop faster, hyper scale permit options, whereas Talleriko is really focused on local control. We are talking about the rise of opposition to the big data center build out, who the issues mobilizing, how it could influence voters in the upcoming election. We've been talking nationally when we get back from the break, we're going to talk with some local activists and folks covering our local issues here. Right now we're joined by Abbey Andre, co-executive director at the impact project. We've also got Molly Taft, a reporter at Wired who's been covering the opposition to the data center build out. Of course, we want to hear from you. Is this an issue that resonates for you? Why? We're really curious about sort of how you got politicized around this, whether you're going to get a data center build out or against.

12:29You can even call the number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. The email is forum at kqed.org. You can find us on Blue Sky, Instagram, Discord, or KQED forum. One listen, write down to say, funny how impossible it is to build civilian infrastructure, to benefit everyone, but data centers are being erected overnight. Almost overnight we seemingly know red tape or four signs. That's one reason people might be opposed. I'm Alexis Madrill, station for more. Right after the break. Support for forum comes from San Francisco Opera. This fall, you're cordially invited to the most chaotic wedding of the century. The Wiley Valley, Figaro and Clever Housemaid Susanna are excited to tie the knot. The arrogant head of the house, Kant Amaviva, is determined to get in the way.

13:30Schemes and disguises abound as a lovable couple pull every trick in the book in order to exchange their marriage vows. Don't miss most arts beloved romantic comedy The Marriage of Figaro. October 31st through November 29th, sfopra.com. Support for forum comes from San Francisco Opera. This fall, you're cordially invited to the most chaotic wedding of the century. The Wiley Valley, Figaro and Clever Housemaid Susanna are excited to tie the knot. But the arrogant head of the house, Kant Amaviva, is determined to get in the way. Schemes and disguises abound as a lovable couple pull every trick in the book in order to exchange their marriage vows. Don't miss most arts beloved romantic comedy The Marriage of Figaro. October 31st through November 29th, sfopra.com. Fulgetvecht Forum, Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the rise of data center opposition and how it is impacting politics nationally

14:31as well as locally. We've got Wired's Molly Taft. We've got the impact projects Abbey André. They've been tracking how politicians across the country are responding to this grassroots opposition. And let's bring in one of our local folks here. Marie for Miranda is a member of stop Pittsburgh data center local group here welcome, my for. I thank you, muddy faith just on it. Muddy fed muddy fed. No worries no worries. How let's just talk about your path like had you been involved in local politics or did this issue kind of suck you in? Oh yeah, I've been involved in politics my whole life, particularly because my identity as a doctor recipient has been so heavily politicized. And so I've been involved in kind of just being aware of my status how to get involved, who at level to get involved,

15:31that is safe for me since especially in high school. And so I've been doing this for about 10, 12 years. But I think at this level where it's specifically around like because it's so close to my neighborhood, that is I think what drew me in and the fact that I found out about it so late in the process, right, was what drew me an even more because having been involved in different cities across the bay and you know, the local, you know, public processes, they are for residents, like it just blew my mind that I hadn't been notified. Yeah, for those who haven't heard about it, this would be a quite large data center built out in various phases on what's now a golf course, right? And so when given that you have experienced these other political processes,

16:32are you surprised by how much opposition has come out, you know, relative to some other local issues that may have had a harder time drawing grassroots support? I think it's exciting. I think being involved, it's like it's actually really difficult, especially since pandemic, to get people out to actually stand on what they believe. And I think to some certain extent, due to fear. And so I feel like as an organizer seeing so many people across different ages, across different, even like political parties show up for this issue, I think was exciting. I think shocked me that people were so ready to engage with it, like had done some level of research or understanding to get to that point. I think that was what really shocked me, that people took it into their hands to educate themselves. What do you think is really motivating you yourself and also the people that you're organizing with? You know, despite a lot of

17:36D-motivation from like these long meetings and really difficult conversations we've had to have, what keeps motivating us is like meeting with each other, knowing that there are so many people that still support it. You know, we have a petition that's almost at 28,000 signatures. And that's including obviously not just Pittsburgh residents, but people across the Bay, people within Contra Costa County that are also against the construction if it comes to their part of talent. And so that is what keeps us going, the people that are continuing to ask and be like what's going on and you know need kind of people to step up and take initiative on the issue. Do you all have like a specific set of asks that you want around this data center? Absolutely. We've had some very clear asks I think for the past few months since the issue has

18:39really blown up to the level it has. The first one is really to bring back the issue to the main agenda because the city has consistently tried to make special meetings and you know kind of make it less of a public participation process or like kind of skew it. And so we want to have an actual you know bring this back to the main agenda. But in all we really want to put a moratorium to pause the construction of all data center projects for at least the next six months because the city is also well the city manager is looking into I guess agreements with other AI companies that could lead to potential data center constructions. And so we want to make sure that even though we're focused on this one center it's really about all of the ones that are in the city especially since of the history of the environmental impact living between you know the Martinez refinery refinery and the Pittsburgh refineries well and so it's been a very interesting

19:46you know environmental impacted area that we want to protect. Additionally we also I think this is brought up a lot of concerns around transparency of the city processes and how the public can actually weigh in especially around the budget and what parts of the budget are actually being used because there's a concern of our $5 million deficit. And so that's a big impact and a big reason and motivation as to why the city council is seeking this project in the first place. One last question before before let you go are you more opposed sort of on a kind of local impact side or is it more of kind of overall dislike of sort of what the AI industry is doing? Well I think as a group we are mixed of all kinds of folks right and we all fall into the umbrella of the you know because of all of these concerns the data center should just not be constructed until we have these conversations fully. I think for myself personally I just believe there has not been

20:52enough research done in order to have the level of construction that we're seeing across the country especially just like the the pad like the red tape that is meant to protect some of the environmental impacts have been you know completely ignored or have been thrown away in order to make these processes go faster and so we want to make sure that we pause especially because you know we're made up of a multi-generational multi-racial working class families most of these people are building a future for generations here. Yeah. Um, Mardi Féir, Miranda, member of Stoppidsburg Data Center. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much. Yeah. We're taking your calls and questions and comments about data centers here locally or across the country the numbers 8667336786. That's 8667336786. The email is

21:54forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media, blue sky, Instagram, discord. We're KQD forum in all those places. Mardi, as you listened to Mardi Féir was that pretty much like how did you was that kind of mainline anti data center opposition with local characteristics like how would you um, just grab. Yeah, I think um, you know what she was expressing is really common for a lot of folks and I'll also point out like one thing she said is that this organ is organizing in some cases has been going on for like a year plus even some of the newer you know it's really intense to organize against a local project like this. You often find yourself in long conversations with people in your town you might not have met before in Mardi Féir's case like as she illustrated going through kind of like archaic processes around permitting around budget you know stuff that some folks who haven't been involved in politics before might not have considered. So first of all these are really long conversations that bring people together and are kind of enabling more political conversations around this one topic. But I also think they can evolve you know I've spoken to organizers who

22:58started off with just environmental concerns worries about data center constructions and now they tell me they're starting to talk about flock cameras. They're starting to talk about you know, they're starting to talk about AI in general. So I think you know there's there's specific conversations you have when your community is close to building one that often center around details like environmental worries permitting processes. But the larger conversations those can evolve as well. So I think it's it's a lot of different topics for a lot of different people. So yeah I've heard a lot of of similar stuff. Um Danny Ritz and just kind of I think this is an important point to make. Danny Ritz I've worked with data centers for decades. I think there's a real difference between the quote shared hosting co-location facility data centers that I'm used to and the new AI data centers. The data centers that I know are human scale and leaf space to companies that need to do business online. The main street of the internet. The massive AI data centers are a different beast rooted in repacious greed. I don't trust them and they should be required at minimum to abide by the same standard of all the smaller scale data centers I deal with

23:58and commit to 100% renewable energy. Let's force them to build out some renewable energy before the AI bubble pops. I think what Danny is talking about there and Molly I'm going to come to you again on this is just what we're talking about with these hyper scale data centers is in fact different right like eat they are larger in size. They are oftentimes using diesel backup generators or on-site natural gas turbines in order to power themselves and that is that raises a whole other set of concerns. Absolutely I think that's a really important point to make. I'm glad Danny brought it up. When people ask me like as an environmental reporter what my biggest environmental concerns are around data centers I say the number one thing is absolutely the fossil fuel built out. As you mentioned it's not only diesel backup generators which have communities have a lot of concerns about local air pollution. Those can be really tricky but we are seeing a shift partly because there was a lot of concern about consumer energy bills from connecting these massive facilities to the grid

24:59and they are really energy intensive. We've seen a shift from companies towards building their own on-site power and by and large the choice for these companies building basically private power plants to power their data centers has been natural gas and not only natural gas but often they will use natural gas technology that is less efficient than what we see in natural gas power plants. They are actually letting off more emissions for the same amount of energy and I do think that that's like a really big concern that might not trickle as much the local level. Again you're probably more concerned about your local air pollution. You're concerned about local land footprint but on a larger term scale we're looking at a pretty significant new source of carbon emissions and they are the amount of data centers of that scale that are being planned. Big question is how many of them will actually get built but that's another part of the conversation but we could be looking at a really serious fossil fuel built out that until very recently. There was not growth in

26:04that. I will say also one difficult part of this conversation is the industry is moving so rapidly and changing so rapidly that sometimes until very recently no one was building private power plants but it started happening with a lag in grid connection and with local concerns about power bills. Another thing we're seeing is increasingly a lot of companies are changing their cooling technology so a lot of the major data centers will no longer use as much water as before partially in response to local concerns. The unfortunate thing about that is the tradeoff from water is power. You have more power intensive data centers because they're losing less water and that leads to more emissions. These things are big and they do make an impact in our environment and energy considerations that really should be talked about. Just for people's sense of scale here now of these things. Let's say the Bay Area uses 678, 910 gigawatts of power depending on the time of day. There are individual facilities being proposed in the Bay Area that would use

27:08half a gigawatt, just individual facilities. It is very substantial and I think that's a big difference. Individual data centers did not use that much power and best. Let's bring in Joseph Gihaw, South Bay digital editor with KQD who's been covering this story down around San Jose. Welcome. Hey, Alexis, good to be here. What's going on down there? You got a complex situation. You use Keksa. Well, a complex situation is a great way to put it. The South Bay is very well known as part of and the heart of Silicon Valley. I think we should start in Santa Clara. You mentioned it earlier in the episode. There's nearly 60 data centers in Santa Clara and that city's been building them or allowing them to be built for decades. That's because the city has its own power company, Silicon Valley power and they sell electricity a lot cheaper than PG&E. On the scale of data center energy use, that's worth a lot. Right now, the city has about 55, maybe about 58,

28:13if you count the ones on the pipeline, but they're out of power right now. The city is undertaking a $450 million power infrastructure upgrade to try and meet the needs of more and more data centers being built there. They've got data center customers waiting for power hookups. This is a city of 130,000 people, a mid-size Silicon Valley city. The average rate payer, the person who lives in a home or an apartment in Santa Clara has seen their rates go up over and over again in recent years. That's a mature data center market. They're dealing with that issue right now. Over in San Oze, that city of about a million people has been actively courting data centers and really trying to bring them to town and announcing major deals and even what they call concierge style support for data center developers to try and bring them into the city and raise their tax base. It's interesting too because that's the kind of the concierge style service. It's something they picked up from some of the other jurisdictions around the country who've been courting data centers.

29:18One listener on discord writes, San Jose government is for data center development, especially so they can get tax revenues from that. They're using Stanford's deliberative democracy lab to get input from residents. Residents want transparency. So far San Jose does not have the hyper-scale data centers that have created noise and pollution problems in places like Tennessee's referencing musk's AI there. Is it working? Is there organized data center opposition down there in San Jose? Does it feel modified by this? These processes that the city is proposing? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very good question. I think there has been a really strong response to the issue of data centers. I think as San Jose, and this has been for more than a year, that they have been actively trying to attract data centers and announcing major deals with PG&E so that they know that data center developers will have confidence that they can build their and get power as the city has been working on that on one hand. On the other side, that has run into

30:18a grassroots resistance effort that has centered in a lot of the things some of our other guests have already been talking about, like local environmental concern, concerns over transparency, and then cumulative effects of what it's like to have a full build-out of data centers in the Silicon Valley area. So what are the unknowns if we continue at this kind of breakneck pace of putting up more diesel and natural gas, backup power, and major facilities? But the city of San Jose has started hosting some community listening sessions and group discussions. Myself and our colleague Guy Mars-Roddy went to the very first community listening session and there were hundreds of people there and many of them were demanding a moratorium. They weren't saying, hey, let's take it easy, let's try and get some protections. They were saying, we don't want these in our community at all, or the more moderate of that group were saying, we don't want them yet and we would really like you to pause this and take a better wholesale look at what this is going to mean for us, both pros, cons, and anything in between. But that's not really been the direction of the city, the city is

31:22pushing ahead. And I did notice in our cup, you got a picture of Mayor Mayhan there with the sleeves rolled up, taking notes in the listening session. One thing I wanted to note, Joseph too, just quickly, is that these things don't fall equally on a city, right? There are certain places within San Jose, like Alviso, right, traditionally pretty underserved, fairly poor area of San Jose, that is sort of slated for a bunch of this development for a variety of reasons. Yeah, I think you've hit it on the head. I mean, I want to make it clear that Mayor Mayhan and some of his talking points has said, we're going to have these buildouts in industrial areas. But what that actually means in practice can look a little different. So a place like Alviso, this is the northern tip of San Jose, this is amid the wetlands and the slews connected to the bay. But we're talking about several major projects, some that are already under construction and several more in the pipeline that would be using intense amounts of power, having massive backup systems, all being clustered in what you said is already kind of a historically underserved area, a place that has not

32:25been fairly resourced by the city. I mean, just for example, Microsoft is building a nearly 99 megawatt facility there right now. It's right along the 237 highway, anyone who drives in Bariat traffic can see it. But also, Google has existing warehouses there, and right across the street from a preschool and a community garden, they're proposing revamping and reshaping those warehouses into a 250 megawatt research facility, which wouldn't quite be a data center, but it would function a lot like one. And it is just steps away from where kids are going to be going every single day. Just for some context, that's more power than all of Marin County uses, that one Google facility. Yeah, we're doing with the rise in data center opposition with KQD Joseph G, how Wired Smolly Taft in the Impact Projects, Abby Andre, you can join the conversation 866-733-6786 or forum at KQD.org. We'll be back with more. Support for Forum comes from Genentech, the original biotech company. For over 50 years,

33:26Genentech has redefined what is possible by challenging the status quo. They have helped drive more than 40 breakthroughs across various diseases, including multiple sclerosis, cancer, vision loss, and food allergies. But their greatest breakthroughs are the ones patients feel, whether it's getting back to familiar routines or creating new ones. Learn more about Genentech's many breakthroughs at gene.com. That's g-e-n-e.com. Support for Forum comes from Genentech, the original biotech company. For over 50 years, Genentech has redefined what is possible by challenging the status quo. They have helped drive more than 40 breakthroughs across various diseases, including multiple sclerosis, cancer, vision loss, and food allergies. But their greatest breakthroughs are the ones patients feel, whether it's getting back to familiar routines or creating new ones. Learn more about Genentech's many breakthroughs at gene.com. That's g-e-n-e.com.

34:28Welcome back to Forum, Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the rise of data center opposition, kind of grassroots movement, and more or less came out of nowhere to be one of the big issues nationally, politically. Turned by Abiann Dre, co-executive director at the Impact Project. We've got Molly Taft, senior climate reporter at Wired, who's been covering this for the magazine. We've got Joseph Gia, South Bay digital editor here at the station. Earlier, you might have heard MideFid, Middanda, who's a member of Stop Pittsburgh Data Center. And of course, we've gotten to your calls and comments to one listener on the Discord rights. Lots of people on social media have seen the videos of creepy humming data centers. It's easy to project onto the soulless building concerns about AI taking your job, lack of accountability, corrupt deals between politicians and corporations, pollution, etc. In what you're tracking, Abiann Dre, how much do you think the

35:29AI stuff, the general way that leaders of say, OpenAI or XAI have talked about these things? How much do you think that's factoring into the data center opposition? Yeah, I think that's a really important point. And we've been focused on data centers as a local issue here. And I think that's right. It's expressed at the local level. But we're really seeing national movements that we haven't seen in the environmental arena until since the end of the 1960s, early 1970s, when we kind of decided as a people that maybe the Gaihoga River shouldn't be able to light on and the EPA was created. This feels similarly symbolic. So a data center is a physical thing that we have in our space that reminds us of things that Americans are worried about. We're worried about inflation and cost of living. We're worried about our bills. The number two issue, second,

36:33affordability in the country is government corruption. So I think the tie-in with the AI question is really interesting at this moment where AI industry leaders have stepped forward to ask to be regulated after years of development and developing their products to a point where they are really powerful, where they are creating concerns about safety and national security. And it really harkens back to me for other areas of regulatory capture that we've seen in the environmental realm. Whether it was when the Clean Air Act was passed and there was an exception for coal-fired power plants or Tosco was passed to regulate chemicals, but there were 62,000 chemicals left off that list because of successful lobbying efforts. So there's a lot going on, but national frustration about overarching issues, fear about AI, fear about whether it's going to be a threat to us and

37:38take our jobs, all seem to be siphoning into the strength of these local issues. Yeah, I really glad you mentioned 60's environmental movement because I keep thinking about a book from that written about that era called the Bulldozer and the Country Side, suburban sprawl and the rise of American environmentalism by Adam Rome. And it describes the kind of grassroots movement that came up and eventually ended up pushing Congress to act led by many of the same types of people who were kind of right on the edges of big metropolitan areas. And when you think about a place like El Viso or you think about Pittsburgh, these are the exact kind of spots right on these kind exerbs or industrial suburbs that played a role in the 60's environmental movement as well. So interesting. Let's bring in a caller here. Let's bring in Dale in San Francisco. Welcome, Dale.

38:40Hello. Go ahead, Evan me. Yeah. I just, the speaker just kind of hit on what I wanted to talk about, but it feels like there's been this in focus on the environmental side of things without really and the overarching societal repercussions have been kind of gliding by under the solution that underneath us underneath us, it's going to be benefit for everyone when it's it seems pretty clear that it's it's very asymmetrical. The actual benefits that are coming from these all aside from just the environmental concerns. Yeah, Dale. Good point. Joseph Gia, are you hearing that from people down in San Jose? I mean, it's such an interesting place down there, right? Because it's there's just tons of normal people live in there, right? But there's also it is, as you said, you know, heart of Silicon Valley. Yeah, I mean, I think the Silicon Valley aspect is an interesting one, right? Because you've got folks who, you know, either themselves or their friends or their family or, you know, people who they work with every day are in the tech industry. So it's a place that is

39:44of the tech industry. And I think that helps people be more maybe cognizant of some of the pros and cons of everything that, you know, this industry and this region is pushing in the form of data centers. Something that's really interesting that you've been talking about with the environmental activism. I mean, there are folks in San Jose who are harkening back to the semiconductor industry in Santa Clara County, which has, you know, had years of mismanagement and toxic material spills that have created more superfund sites than anywhere in the country in Santa Clara County. And that all happened because of the semiconductor industry's rise in the South Bay. And that kind of unrestrained growth in the name of technology and advancement and human betterment of things kind of led to some really unintended and harsh consequences. And I think there's some really clear parallels there with that exact thing that's happening now with AI data centers. As people are concerned about what's 20, 30 years from now look like if we build all these out today. Another massive grassroots movement that sort of got a lot of those superfund sites

40:45recognized, you know, Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition in the early 1980s was such a big part of that. And it's for me at least this current moment has been ringing a lot of those same bells. Let's go to another place here in California. We have Corey Suzuki, whose reporter with KCBS. Welcome. Hey, Alexis, thanks for having me. So Corey, you've been covering data centers for some time. Tell us a little bit about what's been happening in your coverage area. Yeah. Well, I cover a part of the area that I cover is the Imperial Valley, which is a rural farming county to the east of San Diego where our station is based. And just a little background, I mean, this is a really unique place when it comes to water and power. It's part of the Sonoran Desert, all of the water that reaches this area comes from the Colorado River, which this area also has longstanding legal claims to that water, uses more than the state of Colorado, about as much as the state of Arizona. It also has a lot of energy. The valley is among the top producers of renewable energy in California when it comes to county by county. And power rates are

41:49some of the lowest in the state when it comes to those costs. So there's lots of water and power on the surface. But then when you kind of look at what access for residents looks like, it really doesn't always look that way. Water rates can fluctuate a lot based on where you live, access to clean water and water treatment systems can vary a lot too. And the power grid here is aging outages or often frequent, especially during storms and hot summer months. And so that's kind of all been the backdrop to this conversation around a very large data center complex that we learned was moving forward in the heart of the valley next to residential neighborhood late last year. This is a 950,000 square foot data center. It's got a large battery system, a bank of natural gas generators for backup power. And it would have its own power substation. It's a hyper scale data center. It would be designed for use by AI companies. And the company behind it is a recently formed LLC called Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing, which is actually based in Huntington Beach in Orange County. And the project just would really have some very immense resource demands.

42:54According to the developer's estimates and state energy statistics, it would use more power than the entire county of Imperial used in 2024. And around 750,000 gallons of water per day is what the developer has quoted to the public. So that's raised just a lot of questions, a really fierce opposition and is now having some kind of concrete ripples in local politics. Yeah, where's it going? Like what's going to happen? Well, at the moment, the data center project is sort of stalled in court battles. And that's largely because, I mean, this goes back to some of the questions and concerns that modifier and Molly mentioned earlier. I mean, these kinds of questions about transparency that a lot of people have and kind of Molly mentioned a culture of secrecy. That's really been, I think, at the core of the concerns that residents have raised about this project here in the Imperial Valley, which is that the developer behind this project tried to design it in a way that it would meet local

43:56zoning codes, that it would be able to be built very quickly. And that in particular, it would not have to go through an environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act. We've seen some other examples of projects that have gone this way. Even though it's going to double the use of electricity in the county. Right. Exactly. And I think that disconnect between those two pieces for people have been the greatest overarching concern that if this analysis doesn't happen, and a lot of people, I know, think there are problems with SQL analysis and the length of time. But I mean, at the bottom line, I think for a lot of people who are thinking about this project in the Valley is that this means there will be no in-depth disclosure of how this project will affect energy access, water access, and public health. That's raised a lot of concerns for people about power, water, and air pollution. And now a court has decided just recently, and within the last several weeks, that this project will need to go through an environmental review. The developer has

44:59said that he's planning to appeal that decision. So we're still kind of in the middle of this, not quite sure how it's going to shake out, but that's kind of where things stand right now. So interesting. One of our listeners, Annie writes, and there's something extremely predatory about these data centers. They seem to look for places to land that are financially insecure. This has been one of the key key points to the environmental justice movement all along. Is that big, big facilities that have big impacts are oftentimes located in the places that are politically least able to resist them? Let's bring in Elise in Oakland. Hi, Elise. Yeah, go ahead. Hi, I've been working on electric tariffs for data centers for the past two years. I just wanted to make your caller or your listeners aware that right now under the status quo, transmission network upgrade cost, dinner connect data centers are currently being spread across all ratepayers of the utilities, not being funded by the data centers, which is a huge loophole. They can be up to $100 million in costs for just one data center.

46:02And this is currently pending before the Public Utilities Commission, but the Google facility, I think was mentioned earlier in the show, their interconnection agreement is actually being voted on by the CPC next week. And they, to the CPC's credit, they have a pretty nice fee in there for to capture these costs. But I will tell you that PUD&E and Google has been meeting with the commissioners, advisors, very regularly. It's all public on their website, but they are obviously trying to get Google exempt from this fee. So I encourage people to write into the CPC if they think their power bill shouldn't go up to support Google and other large tech companies interconnection. So interesting, Elise, thanks so much for the knowledge and for the research over the years there too. You know, Molly, I mean, there are so many different components to this and that it makes me think about, you know, thinking about your article. This is exactly why this issue has taken off, right? Because there's like a 100 different

47:06handholds for people based on their own personal politics into how they might get into this data center a political game. Yeah, absolutely. It's so complicated because as we as we covered before, like these facilities are so energy intensive that like a lot of our systems, both politically and the way we do energy in this country are kind of not set up to receive this. Like the conversation about what data centers should be paying for in terms of transmission and grid upgrades is a national one. It's not just California, right? But we're at a point where the White House has had tech companies and utilities and Republican governors signed this kind of voluntary pledge that they put together to not raise right payers costs and to have data centers pay for utility upgrades. That but it was only kind of a lot of a largely, largely, you know, toothless pledge that a lot of critics said didn't really do anything. It's moved, you know, there's a Senate bill now that's actually put forward by John Heustead of Ohio who's facing the stuff re-election battle about

48:08data centers that Democrats actually shot down earlier this week because they said he was just kind of trying to gain political points, right? So it's this like I mentioned earlier, there's just been so little regulation and attention paid to the industry until very recently and all of a sudden that there are just so many footholds you can get. The system is not set up for a massive new electric customer like this and a lot of our society is not set up for this barrage of AI that's coming at us. And so I yeah, like you I'm really not surprised that it's making so many conversations happen at both the local, state, national level that are really reshaping kind of how how we talk about politics and how we talk about these issues. Yeah, let's bring in death in San Francisco. Welcome, death. Hi, thank you. I'm a little concerned about how futile this fight heals, you know, I compare it a little bit to like the battle about flock cameras like okay great some municipalities

49:09are taking down flock cameras, but a company called Axon is right behind them and they start of like that man villains that run these companies, they just do whatever they want and then they just pay politicians, you know, it just I'm just hoping for some good news about some of these fights. Um, Duffa appreciate that perspective. Um, my test, I mean some people seem to be having, you know, some success in these fights on an individual level, you know, I'm thinking about we just had on Astrotailer and Naomi Klein and their book End Times Fashes and they talk about having some success there in Indiana, for example. Yeah, I mean, I actually think that there's been a lot of really remarkable success. A lot of local municipalities have passed moratoriums, we are seeing a lot of legislation in response to this and I think that it's also having an

50:09effect on Wall Street, right? Like the the local resistance is actually playing a factor in some of these data centers getting seriously delayed and investors are starting to worry about it. It's kind of one of numerous numbers of factors that is affecting this build out. So I definitely hear your callers like frustration at how this system is set up. Um, but in kind of comparison to other political issues, this does seem to be moving the needle on some local levels. And now there is a larger question right of when you stop a data center, what are you actually stopping? The AI boom could just keep going forward, you know, computers get more efficient all the time. They could find new ways to implement AI and do that do the advances they need without this huge build out. There's a big question as to how many of these things the companies would actually need to do what they're aiming to do. But I will say that this this issue is moving really fast and I think that folks who are organizing have seen real success on the ground in multiple different places.

51:09Well, and I think I would have probably given quite quite a different answer to that question before the last few months where I totally agreed off it seemed like this was just this was just going to happen. It was more or less assumed by all of the big AI players that they were going to be able to do this. And now that it's like up in the air a little bit more Joseph, G how one quick thing one listener writes, I'm surprised NDAs haven't been mentioned yet. Not disclosure agreements. I don't believe the government should be allowed to enter into NDAs with anyone let alone data center builders. Have you come up with that? Have you come up against that there in San Jose? Yeah, I mean, that is a great point. And that's, you know, how Louisiana and the meta, you know, five gigawatt facility got done essentially according to our New York Times investigation. We saw that, you know, there was a ton of NDAs and a ton of secrecy. We have a council member in San Jose, who represents district five Peter Ortiz, who has put forth and is now it's working on a policy of banning or barring all San Jose city council members and potentially high-level city staff

52:10from signing NDAs with data center developers for that very reason for building trust. And San Jose has a big legacy of that Google, you know, many years ago under previous Mayor Sam Lacardo bought up so much public land in downtown San Jose to try and do a new massive mixed use campus and township basically. And that's gone nowhere. But at the time that the deal was being made, it was all done with NDAs. So I think there's a legacy there and a concern about what happens when the people who represent residents keep things from them, even if it's just for the, you know, the early on set discussions. Man, what an interesting set of issues here, everyone. Thank you so much. We've been joined by Joseph G. Haas, South Bay digital editor with KQED. We've also had Molly Taf senior climate reporter at Wired. You should keep following their coverage there at the magazine. We've also had Abby Andre, co executive director at the impact project. Cory Suzuki, a reporter with KCBS and earlier you heard from MadiFed, Miranda, who's a member of Stop Pittsburgh data center.

53:11Thank you so much to all of our commenters, collars listeners. We really appreciate you. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Head with Meena. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the Generosity Family Fund and the members of KQED. Support for Forum comes from Genentech, the original biotech company. For over 50 years, Genentech has redefined what is possible by challenging the status quo. They have helped drive more than 40 breakthroughs across various diseases, including multiple sclerosis, cancer, vision loss, and food allergies. But their greatest breakthroughs are the ones patients feel, whether it's getting back to familiar routines or creating new ones. Learn more about Genentech's many breakthroughs at gene.com. That's g-e-n-e.com.

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