Michael Deppert grows pumpkins, corn, and soybeans on sandy soil in Tazewell County, Illinois, irrigating his crops from a natural aquifer beneath his farm. When a developer called Western Hospitality Partners proposed building a data center about eight miles away, close enough to tap the same underground water, Deppert and his neighbors got organized. They packed city council meetings, mounted petitions, and after several months of sustained pressure, the project was scrapped.
Deppert, who also serves as president of the local farm bureau lobby group, put it plainly: "You just can't lay down and let everybody do whatever they wish."
His fight is not an isolated case. Across rural America, from the corn belt to the desert Southwest, communities are confronting a wave of data center proposals driven by the artificial intelligence boom, and many are saying no. A detailed Financial Times report documents the scale of the collision: more than 160 new AI-focused data centers have been built across the United States in the past three years, a roughly 70 percent increase on the prior total, according to Bloomberg data. And the Pew Research Center found that 67 percent of planned data centers are targeted at rural areas, even though 87 percent of existing ones sit in urban zones.
The buildout is heading straight for farm country. And the people who live there have questions about water, electricity, land prices, and who actually benefits.
The numbers tell a story that no corporate press release can smooth over. S&P Global reported that around two-fifths of all U.S. data centers are located in areas of high water stress. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory forecast that hyperscaler data centers will consume between 60 billion and 124 billion liters of water on-site each year by 2028, roughly 16 billion to 33 billion gallons. And the lab's previous research found that indirect water use tied to electricity generation could be as much as 12 times higher than direct consumption.
For farmers like Deppert, this is not an abstraction. He depends on that aquifer for "good, clean drinking water" and crop irrigation. He called his neighbors "nervous", and with reason.
Energy costs compound the problem. The Department of Energy says roughly 100 gigawatts of additional electricity capacity will be needed at peak times by 2030, and roughly half of that demand will come from data centers. American bill payers already paid over 6 percent more for electricity year on year at the end of 2025. In states with heavy data center concentrations, the hit was worse: Pennsylvania electricity bills rose 19 percent, and Virginia's climbed 10 percent.
Deppert sees the pressure firsthand. "Everything we do is energy intensive," he said. "If those costs keep going up, that comes straight off the bottom line."
Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, noted that data center energy and water consumption peaks during summer months, the same time agricultural demand surges. "Adding another large load at peak capacity puts a lot of strain on the system and adds cost," she said.
That dynamic has echoes in other sectors facing the downstream costs of the AI infrastructure push. Oracle recently cut thousands of jobs as its own data center spending mounted, a reminder that the financial pressures of this buildout reach well beyond the communities hosting the facilities.
Data center developers are drawn to rural land for straightforward reasons: it is cheap, flat, and often close to existing power infrastructure. Jason Bell of real estate group JLL described the dynamic bluntly: "Anywhere there's a path to power... that's where data center developers are flocking." He noted that land with sufficient power capacity can sell for five to 10 times more than similar land without it.
Curt Covington, a senior director at land financing group AgAmerica, said developers are "bidding up the price" for farmland. "If [they] can get 1.5 times what this property is worth... they'll part with their land," he said.
That may sound like a windfall for some sellers. But Bob Stewart, who farms corn and soybeans in Yorkville on the outskirts of Chicago, sees a different picture. He said it is "sad to see" rich black soils "get turned into development." And for farmers who want to expand, or hand operations to the next generation, rising land prices are a barrier, not a benefit. "If we want to buy more [land], so that my kids can take over, we'd like farm prices to stay kind of where they're at," Stewart said.
Miquel Vila, lead analyst at Data Center Watch, a research project run by AI security company 10a Labs, summed it up: "Rural communities have become a target."
The tension between industrial development and the communities asked to absorb it is not unique to data centers. Ford's recent Kentucky plant closure sparked a similar debate about what happens when corporate decisions reshape local economies without local consent.
The resistance is national. In Tucker County, West Virginia, a complex of gas-powered data centers has been proposed near the small town of Davis, whose water treatment plant can produce about 250,000 gallons a day. Jim Kotcon, chair of the conservation committee for the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, said residents filed "literally hundreds" of comment letters and petitions with state agencies. He pointed out that the Davis treatment plant ran dry during a recent drought and warned that a single large data center could require "millions of gallons a day."
Kotcon said he is "not opposed to data centers per se", so long as they are "done right." But he warned of depleted aquifers, pollution, and stranded assets if projects proceed without adequate safeguards. "When the well runs dry, we learn the value of water," he said. The Sierra Club is tracking four data center projects in West Virginia.
In Tucson, Arizona, Amazon was forced to abandon a proposed data center project after residents raised concerns over water and energy use. In Caledonia, Wisconsin, Microsoft faced similar opposition. And in Indiana, the backlash turned dangerous: shots were fired at a local lawmaker's home, and a note saying "no data centers" was left behind.
Texas agriculture commissioner Sid Miller warned that the "unchecked spread of data centers onto prime farm and ranch land is a real and growing threat to our food supply." He argued projects should be directed toward less productive land. Analysis by Investigate Midwest showed around 78 percent of U.S. counties dependent on agriculture voted for Trump in 2024, making this a potent issue in the political heartland.
Not everyone in rural America opposes the projects. DeKalb, Illinois, a city of around 40,000 people, already hosts a Meta data center, and Mayor Cohen Barnes argues the benefits are real. A $33 million elementary school was recently constructed in what he described as one of DeKalb's most disenfranchised neighborhoods, funded in part by property tax revenue he attributes to Meta.
"The data center itself pays an enormous amount of property taxes, and in the state of Illinois, our school system is funded primarily by property taxes."
Barnes also pushed back on water concerns, comparing Meta's consumption to a Northern Illinois University dormitory when the university is in session. Meter data shared with the Financial Times shows Meta's site on average draws around 40,000 gallons each day, well below the 1.2 million gallons per day it is permitted to consume under its developer agreement. DeKalb's total water demand averages just over 3 million gallons a day and rises above 4.5 million gallons at peak. A single large AI data center's needs are broadly comparable to that peak figure.
Jamie Walters, a farmer near DeKalb who also runs a whiskey distillery, has leased hundreds of acres for solar panels and holds a contract to supply renewable power for data centers. He noted that corn might net $100 an acre in a good year, while an acre given over to solar can generate thousands. When a second developer, Edged, promised to use a closed-loop cooling system, Walters said he was "cautiously optimistic."
"It's change," Walters said. "But I'd rather be inside the process than standing on the outside saying no."
The administration has encouraged the buildout. Tech giants recently pledged at a White House event to "build, bring, or buy new-generation capacity for data centers and pay the full cost of infrastructure upgrades required to support their operations." S&P Global reported that data centers accounted for 80 percent of private sector growth in the first half of 2025.
The industry's answer to water concerns has been to promote closed-loop cooling systems that recirculate coolant instead of evaporating fresh water. Doug Adams of NTT Global Data Centers, described as the world's third-largest operator, said such systems reduce overall energy demand. "It's more costly to build up front, but in the long run it's more efficient to use [coolant] to evacuate heat," he said. Nvidia says it has developed more energy-efficient chips that require even less cooling.
But the trade-offs are real. Shaolei Ren, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside, who studies data center infrastructure, said operators using alternatives to water-based cooling consume "25-35 percent more electricity" in summer, shifting the burden from water systems to the power grid.
OpenAI chief Sam Altman dismissed water-consumption concerns as "totally fake" at the India AI summit in February, arguing evaporative cooling was a problem of the past. His company has committed to spend $600 billion on infrastructure by the end of 2030, according to people familiar with the matter. That kind of spending reshapes labor markets and supply chains nationwide, a shift Mike Rowe has warned will transform the American workforce in ways many communities are not prepared for.
Jonathan Koomey, a former project scientist at Berkeley Lab, offered a sharper critique. "Technology companies talk about a sense of urgency. This is only the case because they're in an arms race," he said. "Is there a social urgency? I'm not sure there is one."
The politics are awkward. Republican voters in agricultural counties overwhelmingly backed Trump in 2024, and the administration's support for AI development is a stated priority. But many of those same voters are the ones showing up to town halls to block data centers from consuming their water, driving up their electricity bills, and paving over their farmland. Democrats have called for tighter regulation. Republicans in several states have campaigned against new developments.
Americans broadly share the skepticism. Pew Research Center found that Americans are more likely to view data centers as harmful than beneficial when it comes to environmental impact, domestic energy costs, and quality of life.
The pattern of voters and courts pushing back against top-down decisions imposed on local communities is playing out on other fronts as well. In Virginia, a state Supreme Court ruling kept a block on a redistricting referendum after a lower court found that Democrats in the legislature violated multiple laws in rushing a new congressional map to voters. Legal scholars have argued the ballot language was misleading, describing the map as a measure to "temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness" even though the changes were not designed to be temporary. The proposed map would have left Republicans with just one of Virginia's 11 congressional seats. Democrats have appealed the ruling, but the effort remains stalled, another case of ordinary citizens and local courts refusing to be steamrolled.
Data centers accounted for 80 percent of private sector growth in the first half of 2025. The broader AI spending push is reshaping corporate balance sheets and workforce plans across the tech sector. The question is whether the communities footing the real-world costs, in water, power, land, and livability, will have any meaningful say in how that growth unfolds.
Silicon Valley can call the concerns "totally fake." The farmers watching their aquifers, their electric bills, and their property-tax rolls know better.