The AI boom has an unlikely gatekeeper: local zoning boards

Keri Silvyn represents a developer building data centers in Pima County and Marana, Arizona, a role that involves guiding clients through the reclassification of property reserved for homes or farms. Lately, however, the Tucson attorney also finds herself confronted with angry residents opposed to plopping the dreary, hulking structures in their community.

Lawyers like Silvyn have represented data center builders for as long as those facilities have existed. The process was straightforward. Then opponents started packing public meetings.

Their critiques involve excessive noise and the colossal supply of electricity needed to keep the centers humming. For her part, Silvyn sees an underlying opposition to artificial intelligence in their criticisms, and hearings on zoning laws give them a chance to voice their frustration.

“Land use is sometimes the spot where people air their grievances,” she said.

Across the country the proliferation of data centers powering the AI boom has turned a didactic sector of land use law that only the nerdiest civil servants and real estate lawyers discuss in polite conversation into a battlefield.

Most rural land is zoned for homes or agriculture, requiring zoning changes for data center construction. With tech companies requiring more places to store data used to train AI models, zoning has simultaneously become a steep hill for proponents to climb and a potent weapon opponents can wield.

Phoenix land use attorney Jason Morris called zoning the “Achilles’ heel” of the data center industry.

AI critics “can’t stop the technology, but they can stop the data center,” he told Straight Arrow.

The attorney said data centers once amounted to a fraction of his cases. But since the advent of generative artificial intelligence?

“It’s taken over my practice,” he said.

What are the main community concerns about data center construction?

Zoning laws originated in the 1950s to give local governments control over what kind of buildings can be erected and where, Silvyn said. Today nearly every American community has them.

Data center opposition is both grassroots and national, spanning local groups with a handful of members to organizations with household names.

READ MORE: How data centers became America’s favorite new villain — online and IRL

“We are opposed to development that comes at the expense of our health,” said Abre’ Conner, director of the NAACP’s Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, noting data centers are planned in regions that rely on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity.

She also decried “the lack of transparency for decisions that impact our lives,” referring to non-disclosure agreements that some developers rely on to keep plans under wraps.

Data center supporters, for their part, argue that the facilities raise revenue for cash-strapped communities and can be built without affecting utility bills.

Food and Water Watch is one organization leveraging zoning laws to restrict data centers.

Pennsylvania municipalities cannot ban any legal land use outright, but can impose stipulations, said Megan McDonough, the group’s Pennsylvania director.

“That’s the arena that we find ourselves in,” she told Straight Arrow.

Pennsylvania communities are proactively restricting data centers, but are also parsing their existing rules for any restrictions that could preclude the facilities, McDonough said.

“We’re helping residents and elected officials navigate the nuances and complexity of land use and zoning,” she said.

However, some cities are stuck with pre-existing zoning laws that allow for data centers, said Tristan Thomas, director of policy and law for the advocacy organization Alternatives for Community and Environment. 

“In many cases the current zoning laws aren’t able to be leveraged,” he told Straight Arrow.

His organization works with local governments to update those rules.

In some cases, land use hearings are the reason the public becomes aware of a planned data center. A developer building a data center in rural Louisiana, for example, required local officials to sign non-disclosure agreements, but their plans were revealed at a public vote on zoning changes, according to NPR.

How do data centers affect utility bills and local power grids?

The success rate of data center developers is difficult to ascertain, as no one seems to track how often zoning laws are changed to make way for the facilities.

But data center opposition has turned normally mundane meetings into legal war zones, echoing heated zoning debates over detention centers in communities across the country earlier this year. Reports of tense hearings on zoning changes are now a regular part of the news cycle.

Dozens of people packed a city council meeting in Canton, Ohio in July to weigh in on zoning changes that would permit a data center, according to the Canton Repository.

Residents uniformly opposed the center, citing excessive noise and steep electric bills.

Attorney Jason Morris once counted data center cases among his easiest.

The buildings “are very nondescript and generate almost no traffic,” he said. “They were a pleasure to deal with.”

“The outrage and the panic is new,” he said.

READ MORE: The big reason small cities want data centers. Hint: It’s not permanent jobs

The Arizona attorney considers data centers a victim of the controversy surrounding artificial intelligence, which has been accused of replacing white collar workers and siphoning off massive amounts of electricity.

“I’m getting opposition from people who talk about their mother losing their job to AI,” he said. 

That argument doesn’t sway him.

“At the end of the day, that has nothing to do with land use,” Morris said. “But it’s how you stop AI.”

Economists say the jury is still out on the impact of artificial intelligence on employment, but the centers can require as much electricity — and, some argue, as much water — as a small city. And mounting evidence suggests data centers increase utility bills and contribute to air pollution.

In response, some center developers have pledged to build their own power sources.

The Pima County and Marana data centers will use recycling systems to keep water use to a minimum, Silvyn said.

“It’s the equivalent of an office building,” she said.

Do data centers create permanent jobs and tax revenue for small towns?

Marana, a bedroom community with desert lawns filling the space between Spanish colonial houses straddling an interstate between Phoenix and Tucson, decided in January to update its zoning laws to make way for a data center.

The planning commission and city council approved the change, council member Patrick Cavanaugh told Straight Arrow.

Cavanaugh said he reluctantly voted yes after hearing from construction workers tired of driving an hour to Phoenix for the most lucrative jobs.

Opponents note that most of the jobs data centers create are temporary construction jobs, but “all construction jobs are temporary,” Cavanaugh countered.

“I regret it now,” he said of his vote, citing community opposition.

Marana’s Mayor and other City Council members did not respond to requests for comment.

When Marana tweaked its zoning rules to accommodate the data center, the city also included provisions restricting, among other things, excessive noise, said Michelle Kauk, director of communications for Beale Infrastructure, the developer behind the facility.

“We’re doing everything we can to make sure that (electricity costs) are not passed on to ratepayers,” she told Straight Arrow.

A representative of the electric cooperative that serves Tucson said in a public meeting that power bills would hold steady for at least three years, Kauk said, although she acknowledged that she doesn’t know what will happen after that.

Clarity or confusion?

Zoning changes are intended to provide clarity, but in Canton the changes only created more confusion, city council member Frank Morris said.

Canton is known nationally for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but now regional headlines involve residents’ effort — unsuccessful so far — to halt the construction of a data center in the city of 70,000 an hour drive from Cleveland.

The council in July approved zoning changes to pave the way for the facility, but Frank Morris — one of three council members who voted no — said it was not clear what they voted for because the area was already zoned for light industry and work on the center had already begun.

“We have a serious problem with transparency,” Frank Morris told Straight Arrow.

Other council members and the city’s Mayor did not respond to requests for comment.

Kauk maintains that data centers constructed responsibly can benefit the cities and towns they are built in. The company says the Marana data center will raise $145 million in revenue for the city during its first phase.

“We take concerns and feedback from the community very seriously and we want to make sure people have as much information about the projects as possible,” she said.

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