I was in the car at the right time today to learn all about community response to data centers on 1A (locally on MPR). They point out that there are 3,000 data centers in the US and spoke with varied and passionate people about their experience. Turns out near Washington DC (hometown to 1A) is a hotbed of data centers. They don’t talk about what’s happening in Minnesota but sometimes it’s easier to take in the information when I’m not invested in the characters.

This is the first of a two-part series. (Listen online.) You can also listen to part two next Tuesday (Aug 4 2026) from 11am to noon on MPR. Below is the description from 1A…

Data centers are everywhere in the news right now and for good reason. Many projects are planned or under construction across the country. They’re backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in investment from the biggest tech companies in the world. They power not just artificial intelligence, but pretty much everything that happens online – your streaming, your email, your cloud storage.

But they’re not without their drawbacks. They consume a lot of electricity and water. They’re showing up in communities whose residents don’t always feel they had a say in green lighting their construction.

Opposition across the country is growing. Billions of dollars worth of projects were blocked or postponed in just the first three months of 2026 alone.

What are data centers costing communities and what are they delivering? And when people push back, is it about the facilities? Or what these facilities represent?