Two Americas, One Buildout

On the same day last week, two meetings happened in two different parts of the country.

In Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, construction crews continued work on a $1 billion Meta data center expected to open in 2027. The site spans 350+ acres. The local economic development corporation signed a non-disclosure agreement with a shell company called Balloonist LLC back in December 2023, fourteen months before the public learned a "potential data center project" was even being discussed. The actual operator, Meta, was confirmed eight months after that.

In Durham, North Carolina, council members voted unanimously to pass a 60-day moratorium on data centers. Council member Nate Baker told a packed chamber: "Durham is the first, not the only, of North Carolina's major communities to do this."

Both meetings were about the same industry. Both reflected real economic activity. Both will create jobs, contracts, professional services, and ripple effects across local economies.

And both will produce winners.

This is the part of the data center story almost nobody is covering properly: there isn't one economy here. There are two. And the smartest operators are positioning themselves to win in both.

Before we dig in, a clarification.

This newsletter has covered the political tipping point (Issue #14), the waste heat opportunity (Issue #15), and the land game (Issue #16). All three painted a picture of an industry under stress.

This issue is going to look at something different, the parallel economy emerging around the opposition itself. Lawyers. Consultants. Environmental researchers. Policy advocates. Community organizers. The people making money fighting data centers, professionalizing the resistance, and structuring the deals that resolve the standoff.

This is not a defense of either side. It's a market analysis of both.

If you read this newsletter looking for ground truth, you should know that ground truth in 2026 includes the fact that opposition to data centers is now a multi-million-dollar professional industry. It's organized, funded, and growing fast. Ignoring that is as misinformed as ignoring the $710 billion in hyperscaler capex.

The defining feature of the American data center industry in 2026 is information asymmetry.

The developers know what they're building, where, for whom, and at what scale. Most local governments know roughly what's being proposed but are bound by non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from discussing details with constituents. Residents know almost nothing, until construction starts.

This isn't a conspiracy. It's a documented business practice. And the numbers are staggering.

A University of Mary Washington research study published last year found that 25 of 31 localities in Virginia with proposed or existing data centers have NDAs in place. The researcher, sociology professor Eric Bonds, called that an 80% rate, and suggested it was probably a low estimate, because some NDAs are structured in ways that don't appear in public records requests.

Other documented cases:

Wisconsin - At least four municipalities (Beaver Dam, Menomonie, Kenosha, Janesville) signed NDAs with shell companies before learning who the actual operators were. Beaver Dam's NDA was signed in December 2023; Meta wasn't publicly confirmed as the operator until early 2025. The local economic development corporation could not even disclose "the existence of the project" for fourteen months.

Michigan - Lowell Charter Township and at least three other Michigan communities signed NDAs before Microsoft was disclosed as the developer in January 2026, nearly a year after the agreement.

Minnesota - Local officials referred to a Meta data center proposal as "Project Bigfoot" for more than a year. The developer used a front company called Jimnist LLC. A Meta representative emailed the University of Minnesota using the alias "Ken Confidential." The city approved development plans without publicly acknowledging it was a data center.

Arkansas - In West Memphis, city employees refused to discuss plans because of an NDA with Google. The same was true in Little Rock. Officials directed reporters to chamber of commerce employees, who also refused. NDA-protected information includes electricity prices, daily water usage, and tax incentive structures.

Arizona - Pima County officials were bound by an NDA over "Project Blue," a $3.6 billion AWS data center. One supervisor said he didn't even realize he was covered by the agreement until a developer's spokesperson called to accuse him of violating it by talking to a local newspaper. The City Council voted unanimously last August to oppose the project after public outcry over the secrecy.

Project names you'll find in current proposals: Project Delta, Project Alpaca, Project Maize, Project Blue, Project Bigfoot, Project Baccara, Project Hyperion, Project Kati 2, Project Stratos. Most have no published end user.

This is the entire ballgame. When local officials cannot tell residents what is being built or by whom, the vacuum gets filled with speculation. Some of that speculation is legitimate concern about water and electricity. Some of it edges into conspiracy theory. The developers blame the activists for "misinformation." The activists point out that you can't be informed about something nobody will tell you.

Both are right. Both are wrong.

The information vacuum is the actual problem. And right now, an entire economic ecosystem is monetizing both sides of it.

The story almost no one is telling in this market is that opposition to data centers has become a serious, well-funded, professional operation. Not a fringe movement. Not a NIMBY uprising. A structured industry with law firms, advocacy nonprofits, research institutions, communications professionals, and funding pipelines.

The numbers, where they've been disclosed:

A pro-energy group called Power the Future sent a letter to congressional Republicans last month asking them to investigate the funding behind anti-data-center campaigns across 24 states. The letter named specific organizations:

Power the Future's claim: these organizations have collectively spent millions opposing data center expansion. Three pooled funds, New Venture Fund, Sierra Club Foundation, and Sixteen Thirty Fund, have reportedly received over $13 million from pro-environmental donors.

You can argue about the politics of who's funding what. You can argue about whether nonprofit donor disclosure rules need to change. What you can't argue with is the scale of organized activity.

The professionalization is visible in the casework:

Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) - Now operating an active data center litigation practice. Suing Stokes County, North Carolina, over Project Delta (a 1,845-acre hyperscale rezoning approved despite the county planning board's recommendation to deny). Co-counsel with Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Also suing Georgia Public Service Commission with Sierra Club over Georgia Power's data center-driven expansion of fossil fuel generation. Active in Alabama on the Bessemer hyperscale case. Filed suit against Eagle Rock Partners in Twiggs County, Georgia. Forced project cancellations in Jones County, Georgia, and a Colleton County, South Carolina, reapplication.

Earthjustice, Sierra Club, and state-level affiliates - Active in regulatory proceedings before state public service commissions in Georgia, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, and Michigan. Most of these cases involve challenging utility cost allocations that would shift data center infrastructure costs onto residential ratepayers.

Piedmont Environmental Council - The leading organization in Virginia. Spokesperson Julie Bolthouse has become one of the most-quoted opposition voices in national coverage.

Good Jobs First - Tracks data center tax incentives across the country. Provides research used by local opposition groups to argue that data centers receive disproportionate subsidies relative to job creation.

Athena Coalition - A coalition of organizations focused on Amazon's corporate accountability, including its data center expansion. Provides research and campaign support to local opposition.

Local opposition groups have proliferated alongside the national ones. "Wake Up Jeffco" in Festus, Missouri. "Stop the Hermantown Data Center" in Duluth, Minnesota. "Stop Data Centers in Durham Coalition." "7 Directions of Service" and "CleanAIRE NC" in Stokes County. "Our Power" in Maine, which gathered nearly 6,880 letters supporting the state moratorium. Most started as volunteer efforts and have since acquired professional communications support, legal representation, and funded research.

The economic activity this represents:

Legal fees. A data center rezoning lawsuit can run $200,000-$1 million in fees depending on duration and complexity. SELC and similar organizations don't bill clients directly, they're funded through foundation grants and member donations. But the work creates an entire ecosystem of opposing counsel, expert witnesses, environmental consultants, and document review specialists.

Environmental research. A typical opposition case requires Phase 1 ESA review, water resource analysis, noise modeling, air quality assessment, and traffic studies. Each of these creates billable hours for consulting firms.

Public records work. Many cases turn on FOIA requests, public records litigation, and analysis of disclosed documents. This is its own subfield of legal practice.

Campaign and communications. Town hall organizing, petition drives, ballot measure operations, media relations, social media management. Local groups now routinely hire professional firms.

Policy research and advocacy. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, and academic centers at multiple universities are now producing data center impact research at scale. This research feeds into both opposition cases and developer responses.

Acoustic and water consultants. The two technical areas where opposition cases most often succeed. Both have growing service markets.

Property value appraisers. Specialists in measuring the impact of large industrial uses on adjacent residential values. Growing demand from both buyers and sellers in markets near proposed projects.

The opposition isn't just resistance. It's a market.

Stripping away the politics, what are the documented impacts that opposition focuses on?

Energy demand. The Department of Energy estimates data centers used about 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, projected to rise to between 6.7% and 12% by 2028. The five largest hyperscalers announced $710 billion in 2026 capex. Industry sources estimate global data center capex surged 57% in 2025 and could exceed $1 trillion in 2026.

Cost shifting. Multiple state regulatory proceedings have documented that data center power demand is being subsidized by other ratepayers. Virginia's Spanberger administration estimated this at roughly $5.52 per month per residential customer. Ohio's PUCO has documented similar effects. Georgia Public Service Commission is being sued specifically over this.

Water usage. Highly variable by facility type. Hyperscale evaporative cooling can use millions of gallons per day. Closed-loop and liquid cooling systems use far less. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory research suggests most data centers actually use less water than a large commercial office building, though this depends heavily on cooling technology and is contested by other researchers.

Noise. A documented problem at multiple facilities. Chandler, Arizona, eventually changed zoning to block new data centers after nearly a decade of complaints. Fairfax County, Virginia, now requires 200-foot setbacks, noise studies before and after construction, and mandatory barriers. Acoustic mitigation has emerged as its own subfield (covered in detail in Issue #15 prep).

Emissions. Diesel backup generators are the primary concern. Virginia has 10,500+ permitted generator units representing 27 GW of backup capacity. Most run only during emergencies or testing, but emissions accumulate.

E-waste and lifecycle impact. 62 million metric tonnes of global e-waste annually, growing by 2.6 million tonnes per year. Only 28% of data center operators track decommissioned hardware. (Covered in Issue #14.)

Property values. Mixed evidence. Some studies show declines in residential values within a half-mile of large industrial sites. Others show stable or rising values where developers invest in noise mitigation and landscaping.

Traffic and infrastructure. Construction phases generate significant truck traffic for 18-36 months. Permanent operations generate less. Most negotiation around this happens through community benefits agreements (more on that below).

These are real. The opposition is responding to real impacts. The industry's response, that some of these are exaggerated or contextualized poorly, is also real. Both can be true.

The market opportunity sits inside that tension.

While both sides fight publicly, a small group of operators is quietly building a third path: structured, transparent, enforceable agreements between data center developers and host communities.

These are called Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) or Public Benefit Agreements (PBAs). They're legally binding contracts that spell out commitments around jobs, infrastructure investment, environmental protections, transparency, and enforcement mechanisms.

The model works. Here's where:

Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Both Google and QTS have signed CBAs requiring investments in what the city calls the Community Betterment Fund. The City Council determines fund use. Developers can provide input but have no veto power. Performance is tied to milestones, minimum investment levels and job creation targets. Failure to hit metrics triggers consequences written into the agreements.

DeKalb, Illinois. Meta has operated a hyperscale data center since 2023. From 2021-2024, Goldframe LLC (a Meta subsidiary) paid $48.5 million in property taxes. The data center was billed $31.1 million in property taxes for 2025 alone. Mayor Cohen Barnes: "Meta, right now, is our largest economic impact in our small community." Meta has also funded grants for local nonprofits and partnered with Northern Illinois University on STEM education. Critically, the city didn't require Meta to sign agreements for those investments ahead of time, the company built them in as part of its operating model.

San Jose, California. The city has signed CBAs covering nine original data centers, with three more being added. Agreements include infrastructure improvement commitments and timelines. Missing the timeline allows the city to walk away from the agreement. Regular meetings between the city and developers enable flexibility.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania and El Paso, Texas. Both have negotiated CBAs covering tax revenue sharing, infrastructure investment, and workforce development.

What CBAs typically cover:

The Brookings Institution and NAACP have both published CBA template documents in the past six months. The NAACP template includes proposals for fines of up to $50,000 per day for "willful violations" of agreement provisions.

What's emerging is a new specialty:

CBA negotiation is its own professional service. Milldam Public Relations, for example, offers data center developers a "Community Benefit Agreement Development Service", including risk assessment, stakeholder engagement, and document drafting. They're not alone. Several firms are now positioning themselves to help developers structure agreements that reduce entitlement risk and accelerate permitting.

This is the third path. And it's where the biggest opportunity for ambitious operators lives.

If you can:

you're in one of the most under-served professional services markets in this entire industry.

The developers will pay you to reduce entitlement risk. The communities will trust you to monitor compliance. The lawyers on both sides will use your work to structure binding agreements. The regulators will rely on your reporting to enforce them.

This is the brokerage layer that doesn't fully exist yet. Whoever builds it first wins.

The two sides of this fight share a common error: they think they're going to win.

The pro-development camp believes the political opposition is a temporary irritant. They point to $710 billion in 2026 capex, hyperscaler announcements, federal pressure to accelerate AI infrastructure, and the structural reality that the cloud needs physical buildings. Their assumption: build fast enough, get federal preemption of local regulation, and the opposition fades.

This is wrong because the opposition isn't going to fade. It's professionalizing, organizing across state lines, and qualifying for ballot measures. The Wisconsin poll showed 70% of state residents now believe data center costs outweigh benefits. NPR has framed the issue as a "tipping point" for the 2026 midterms. Ohio voters may decide a statewide ban in November. The political headwinds are growing, not weakening.

The opposition camp believes the buildout can be stopped through enough local moratoriums and ballot measures. Their assumption: communities will say no, AI infrastructure investment will slow, and the industry will be forced to scale down or adopt the regulations they propose.

This is wrong because the capital deployment is too large to stop. $710 billion in hyperscaler capex this year means the projects will get built somewhere. If they can't be built in Northern Virginia, they'll be built in Texas. If they can't be built in North Carolina, they'll be built in Louisiana. If they can't be built in the United States, they'll be built in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, or the UAE. The opposition can slow individual projects but cannot stop the global buildout.

The actual outcome, the one neither side wants to admit, is that both will be partially right and partially wrong. Some projects will be killed by community opposition. Many will be built. The terms under which they're built will become significantly more favorable to host communities. The professional infrastructure for negotiating those terms will scale.

This is the market structure that's emerging. And it's where the durable opportunities live.

Plenty of activity since Issue #16:

Camden County, Georgia - On May 12, the Board of Commissioners voted on the nine-month moratorium proposal. The county is moving toward an ordinance approach rather than a full pause. Commissioner Cody Smith continues pushing for stronger protections.

Lysander, New York - The Town Board voted last Thursday on the six-month moratorium. The 1,800-signature petition appears to have moved the council.

Tucson, Arizona - Council members are now exploring whether to formally ban participation in NDAs for future economic development projects. This would be the first municipal NDA-prohibition in the country if it passes.

Northampton County, North Carolina - Continuing to develop the framework for its 32-month moratorium. The county is establishing an advisory committee with resident participation.

Stokes County, North Carolina - The SELC lawsuit over Project Delta continues. Hearings expected this summer.

Pennsylvania - The 180-day clock loophole continues to spread. More townships are starting their clocks to draft new zoning ordinances before any specific project arrives.

Ohio statewide ballot measure - Signature gathering continues. Advocates need 413,488 valid signatures by July 1 to qualify for the November ballot. They have reported strong volunteer recruitment but limited paid canvassing capacity. The deadline is tight.

Maine - No override vote on LD 307. The legislature has reportedly begun drafting a modified version that addresses Governor Mills' specific concerns for the next session. The Mills veto holds.

Virginia - Budget standoff continues. May 22 is Spanberger's deadline to act on remaining bills. The data center tax exemption fight is the central unresolved issue. Senate President Lucas has not budged from her position that there will be no budget with the data center tax breaks intact.

Wisconsin - Senate bill to ban data center NDAs statewide remains stalled. Republican leadership has expressed concerns about competitiveness. Democratic leadership wants stronger transparency requirements. The compromise version under discussion would require disclosure of operator identity within 60 days of any signed agreement, while allowing NDA protection for commercial terms.

Minnesota - Similar NDA-restriction legislation under consideration. Some movement on a narrowed version that would allow NDAs but require disclosure of the project's location, operator, and primary use case within 90 days.

Federal - Rep. Greg Landsman's No Harm Data Center Act (H.R. 8033) remains in committee. The bill would ban NDAs between developers and public officials nationwide. Long odds in the current Congress, but worth tracking.

This Week:

Coming Up:

There aren't going to be winners and losers in the way both camps assume. The data center buildout will continue. Opposition will continue. Some projects will die. Most will get built, but on terms increasingly favorable to host communities.

The durable opportunities sit in the middle:

The information vacuum is the real problem. Whoever fills it, with credible, neutral, professionally-structured information, wins.

The DC Pipeline exists to be one of those sources. It's why this newsletter doesn't pick a side. It's why it covers both the builders and the people fighting the builders. It's why it focuses on opportunity rather than ideology.

Two Americas, one buildout. Both have markets. The smart operators are positioned to work in both.

The DC Pipeline tracks data center construction, policy, and market intelligence across North America. New issues every week.

Have a tip? Hit reply.

Know someone who should be reading this? Forward it. They can subscribe at thedcpipeline.com.