What should you do when a data center is proposed near you?

The company did not decide last week. Most projects take six to eighteen months of quiet work first. During those months the company reserves the land under a name that tells you nothing, and asks town leaders to sign nondisclosure agreements. In Virginia, eight out of ten towns with a data center have signed papers like that.

So by the time you hear about it, the land is often already locked up and the tax deal is often already worked out. From the day a project becomes public to the day your town votes, you usually get one to six months. That window is when a town gets promises in writing, or does not get them at all.

Call your city or county planning office and ask this exact question: is this project by right, or does it need a rezoning or a special use permit?

If they need a yes, you have real power

Rezoning, a special use permit, annexation for city water, a water or sewer hookup, or a tax break all require a public meeting. Your town can say no, or say yes with rules attached. Every real win has happened here.

If it is by right, your job changes

A staff member checks the plans against a checklist. No public meeting, no letter to neighbors, no power to refuse a compliant plan. In that case, ask your town to pause new applications for a set period and change the rules so the next company has to ask permission. That has to happen before the next application arrives.

Four towns that stopped a project show the pattern. Tucson, Arizona refused city water and annexation in a unanimous 2025 vote. Peculiar, Missouri removed data centers from its list of allowed uses and blocked a $1.5 billion project everywhere at once. Prince William County, Virginia had its approval thrown out by a court over hearing notice, and the company withdrew in July 2026. In Douglas County, Georgia, neighbors played recordings of data center noise at the meeting and the board voted it down four to one. In each case the town controlled something the company needed.

• Call the planning office. Ask if the project is by right or needs a permit. Ask for the case number and write it down.
• Request the whole file: the application and all attachments. Most of it is public and you can simply ask.
• Write down two dates: the last day to submit comments, and the date of the vote. Calendar both today.
• Ask whether anyone signed a nondisclosure agreement, who signed it, and who approved it.
• Look up who bought the land at the county recorder or register of deeds. Watch for large recent sales to unfamiliar company names.
• Ask where the water and power will come from, and who pays to build the infrastructure.
• Find your neighbors. Five people who will show up beats 500 signatures from people who will not.
• Pick four or five asks, not twenty. Write them as sentences a lawyer could copy into a permit.

1. Water and cooling

People usually say use a closed loop and recycle the water. Those are opposites. Closed loop means the water stays in sealed pipes and does not evaporate, at the cost of more electricity. Recycled means the water still evaporates, it just started as treated wastewater instead of drinking water. Ask instead for: no drinking water used for cooling, at least 30 percent recycled water, a hard annual gallon cap with penalties that end in service shutoff, the company paying for recycled water pipes the town owns, and monthly published numbers.

2. Clean power

Companies already claim clean energy, because annual credit matching lets them buy credits any time of year from anywhere. Ask for hourly matching verified against the actual meter, newly built clean generation, built on your grid, with the company paying for the transmission upgrades it requires, and with the grid allowed to curtail them before homes lose power.

3. Noise

Most people picture backup generators. Those are loud and easy to agree to, because they run occasionally. The real problem is cooling fans and transformers running every hour of every day. Ask for a baseline measurement of current quiet before construction, limits measured at your property line, removal of the exemption for cooling equipment, annual testing by an outside expert the town picks and the company pays for, and fines large enough to matter.

4. Wells and groundwater

Do not say drill below the water table. Every well is below the water table, and the company's expert will correct you in front of the room. What you mean is: drill into a deeper aquifer and seal the well off from the shallow layer homes and farms drink from. Ask for baseline testing of neighboring wells, company responsibility to repair or replace a failed well with drinking water delivered within 24 hours, an automatic pumping shutoff tied to a named monitoring well, an outside expert the town selects, and monthly published meter readings.

You will get two or three minutes. That is plenty. Most people use the time to say they are worried. Worry does not change a vote. A specific request does.

• Say your name and where you live.
• Say how close you live to the site.
• Say the one thing you want. Just one.
• Give the reason in a single sentence.
• Ask them to put it in writing as a condition of approval.
• Say thank you and sit down.

Bring proof you can hold up. Photos, recordings, and water samples land harder than adjectives.

In St. Louis in 2026, the company agreed to near waterless cooling, 50 percent clean power within five years, limits on generator testing, roughly $15 million for the community, and $2,000 owed to the city for every promised job it fails to deliver. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 2025, a 20 year written agreement capped water at 20,000 gallons a day, backed by a $10 million letter of credit the city can collect if the company breaks the deal.

Good deals do not happen by luck. They happen because someone asked for them in writing, before the vote.