AI data center boom collides with US communities scarred by heavy industry

Data center companies pitch new AI facilities as a source of jobs and economic growth, but most Americans oppose construction near them, largely over environmental and energy concerns. For activists like Shawmar Pitts, that opposition is personal. Pitts grew up in Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood next to what was then the East Coast’s largest oil refinery, which shut down after a 2019 explosion; many friends and family developed chronic health conditions he didn’t connect to the refinery until he met the environmental justice group Philly Thrive in 2018. “I read the information they had on the table about how living near the refinery affects you, and I’m looking at all the sicknesses on this paper, and I’m like, ‘My mother has this, my sister has that’ — every house, someone has something on that list,” Pitts told TechCrunch. “From that point, I was all the way in.”

Pitts, now Philly Thrive’s managing co-director, is leading a push for a Philadelphia data center moratorium; while no construction has been formally proposed, city officials have flagged two potential sites, including Grays Ferry. Philly Thrive board president Sonya Sanders, whose husband — a fellow Grays Ferry resident who neither smoked nor drank — died of a rare bone cancer in 2020, believes emissions from the refinery caused his illness; she and other residents rallied at City Hall this week, with more than 100 people attending.

The concerns aren’t only local. BloombergNEF projects U.S. data centers will consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined by 2035 — nearly double its forecast from nine months ago — generating roughly 1 million additional metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution daily, about 12% of current U.S. emissions. A Clean Air Council attorney told the rally that a typical Pennsylvania data center plan includes hundreds of diesel backup generators the state has said can run during grid-straining heat waves, which are expected to grow more frequent as climate change worsens.

Officials in several states are responding. New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order temporarily halting new large-project permits, and cities including Denver, Indianapolis, Asheville, Charlotte, and Reno have approved their own data center moratoriums to study the impact before allowing construction.

Why it matters

Communities already living with the legacy of heavy industry are becoming the loudest opponents of the AI data center boom, forcing officials in multiple states to slow permitting even as the industry races to build capacity.