The Impacts of Data Centershas us all Concerned!

June 30, 2026

by Ron Prosek, FaCT Board

I didn’t know much about data centers, their connection to AI, and the

widespread harmful impacts they are bringing about until sometime last

year when fellow FaCT Board members made an excellent presentation on

the subject. Thank you, Annette and Justin. Both are also members of the

NAACP, which has been dealing with this issue for quite some time.

I have done my own deep dive into the issue, which isn’t hard nowadays,

as it’s become the burning environmental and social justice issue in Ohio

and all across the nation. One thing is becoming quite clear—opposition to

data centers, especially hyperscale data centers, has brought together

some unlikely elements—political liberals and political conservatives, urban

folks and rural folks, Democrats and Republicans.

For Republicans, many of the communities hardest hit by the impacts of

data centers are the rural areas that are a major part of that party’s base.

The threats to water sources and the loss of farmland to billionaire data

center backers are major concerns. The Ohio Farm Bureau says that Ohio

has lost about a million acres of farmland in recent decades—enough to fill

750,000 football fields. Allowing data centers to gobble up even more of

this valuable agricultural resource seems crazy.

For Democrats and urban residents, the contamination of urban

spaces—land, air, and water and rising electric rates are major concerns.

Members of Conserve Ohio are working to do something about the sprawl

of data centers, especially the larger ones. They have testified before the

Ohio General Assembly, and they have also been circulating a petition to

limit the size of data centers in Ohio to 25 megawatts, which is pretty small.

If they succeed in getting the needed signatures from 44 of Ohio’s 88

counties, the issue will appear on the November ballot as a proposed

amendment to the Ohio Constitution.

After our recent defeat in turning back CCS (carbon capture and storage),

for which we worked mightily with our allies at the Buckeye Environmental

Network, Sierra Club, and others, I have begun to feel that no matter what

we do, how much we educate our legislators, noting seems to work. We

don’t even seem to be heard at all.

It seems the only way we can succeed in protecting our state and our

people is to go AROUND the General Assembly. The initiative petition is

one of the tools that we can use, and embodying data center limitations in

the Ohio Constitution makes it hard to undo.

The deadline for submitting the petition signatures to the state, as of this

writing, is tomorrow, July 1. Let’s hope Conserve Ohio makes it. If so, we’ll

have a chance to back them up in November in voting to pass the

constitutional amendment.

[ To learn more, read Anna Starver’s articles in Cleveland.com ]