Data centers have become an issue in midterm election

Tech companies are building data centers across Indiana and the backlash from communities has reached the campaign trail ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Amazon, Google and Meta and smaller developers alike are planning an array of data centers — large facilities that house the computer servers behind cloud computing, streaming services and artificial intelligence and can draw enormous amounts of electricity and water.

Read More: Delaware County gathers to discuss rumored AMA data center

Residents in rural communities to urban neighborhoods have protested over land, water and electricity use to environmental pollution, economic and health impacts. More than half of Indiana counties have passed restrictions on data centers, such as a zoning regulation, temporary moratorium or outright ban, according to research from the Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute.

Most Indiana voters oppose new data centers, but few call them a top concern. A Free Press Indiana poll found 69% of likely voters oppose the construction of new data centers in the state, yet only 5% named artificial intelligence and data centers as their top concern. Other primary concerns are government corruption (24%) and inflation (20%).

A national Pew Research Center survey found the same tension: 61% of registered voters dislike political leaders who back data centers near them.

Read More: Madison County commissioners extend data center moratorium for full year

One prominent concern connected to data centers is their impact on utility bills. The FPI poll also found 90% of respondents are concerned about rising energy costs. Conducted by Bellwether Research, it surveyed 896 registered voters between Oct. 8-11 and has a ±3.4 percentage point margin of sampling error.

Therese Dorau, with the Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, said the data center issue is bringing home how policy choices affect people in Indiana who may not have been as civically active before.

“People are becoming engaged locally in some cases for the first time ever,” Dorau said. “People with very different political ideals are coalescing around what they want for their communities, and I think that’s engendering a lot of conversation about taking control of your community’s regulations. That extends also to state decisions and state regulations.”

At the state level, representatives and senators in the Indiana General Assembly passed a 2019 law giving data center developers large tax breaks — in some cases, up to 50 years of tax exemptions for operations.

Read More: Delaware County Commissioner supports local data centers and drone development

Nationally, President Donald Trump is taking a pro-data center stance. He’s also mocked opponents by saying communities that reject data center projects must want to stay “backwards and poor.”

Indiana’s Congressional candidates are talking about data centers, too.

The race for the 5th Congressional district — which includes Hamilton County and Anderson, Kokomo, Marion and Muncie — is between incumbent Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz and State Senator J.D. Ford, a Democrat.

Ford said he filed legislation in the General Assembly over the past two years requiring transparency and regulations and to put local communities in charge of the decision.

“This is something that has garnered a lot of attention from multi-generations, different political stripes,” Ford said. “Look, these data centers, they’re eating up our electricity. There’s no reason to look elsewhere, why we have high utility rates in our state.”

Spartz said she has worked on the issue on the House Judiciary Committee and thinks there’s a need for smart policies.

“We cannot be adding data centers on the grid and not generate energy. We’ll not just have problems, you know, with utility costs; we’ll have a blackout,” said Spartz, who sent a letter to federal officials in September requesting an independent federal review of the LEAP District and other data centers in Indiana over concerns about resources and costs.

“I think data centers should be paying, and also be transparent what benefit and value they bring to the people,” she said.

The election is Tuesday, Nov. 3. Early voting is underway.