The pushback is the latest in increased public backlash from rural area subjected to host hyperscale data centers.
Residents of Festus, Missouri, were not feeling the city council’s approval of a $6 billion data center, so they decided to fire more than half of the officials in a fight to save their community, Politico reports.
Resident Sherman Boyle said, “This was so avoidable,” and pressured future city leaders to “listen to your residents.”
Fellow Festus resident Lori Merriman started a grassroots group, Wake Up JeffCo, to fight data center projects in her city and the surrounding areas. “This is going in almost next door to our house,” she said. “We just built it two years ago. It was supposed to be our forever home.”
The pushback is the latest in the growing public backlash against rural areas that host hyperscale data centers despite residents’ objections.
A large data center in South Memphis, Tennessee, operated by Elon Musk’s xAI, has drawn widespread criticism for being powered by natural gas. Residents accuse the data center of increasing nitrogen oxide air pollution, causing breathing problems for the people who call South Memphis home.
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Source: Black Enterprise
