Pushback of the Week, December 7, 2025

People Power Prevails against Data Centers

In late September, Google withdrew its rezoning request for a 500-acre data center in Franklin Township, one of nine townships of Marion County, Indiana, and part of the city of Indianapolis. In the face of massive public protest, the tech giant backed off rather than let the rezoning request come to a vote at the packed, standing-room-only City-County Council meeting.

The data center would have greedily used one million gallons of water per day, and some AI data centers use as much as five million daily gallons. Local residents spent months working to stop the project. Expressing the “do-or-die” spirit of the determined community members, one mother of three stated, “All of us had so much skin in the game…. [W]e felt like we had everything to lose, so why not just fight with everything we had?” A council member opposed to the data center commented, “[In] my six years on the council, I’ve never seen all the rooms filled to the max, with people waiting in the lobby. I’m overjoyed by the amount of community support that came out for this.”

Lured by tax incentives and large tracts of land, Indiana is unfortunately at the center of a building boom for the type of hyperscale AI data centers intended by Google. In addition to being water-intensive, the facilities are unparalleled energy hogs. One forecast suggests that the handful of data centers planned for Northern Indiana alone “will use more electricity by 2030 than all 6.8 million Hoosiers use in their homes today.”

Hoosiers are energetically pushing back, with at least 11 other data center projects withdrawn, according to advocacy organization Citizens Action Coalition, which called for a data center moratorium a year ago. Most recently, residents of Indianapolis’ Martindale Brightwood neighborhood took over an intersection and stopped traffic to protest another data center rumored to be planned for their neighborhood. One of the protesters, a 30-year resident of the community, stated,

“I’m protesting because this community … is just now fighting … the environmental concerns from the 60s and 70s. We’re still fighting those. We don’t need any more environmental issues, not for this community and not for our children.”

The Franklin Township organizers appreciate their victory but are cautious, noting that Google is likely to try again. For that reason, they vow to remain vigilant and keep their “community game built up.”

As with the growing nationwide opposition to Flock cameras, those pushing back against data centers emphasize that the fight is “unifying” and “nonpartisan”:

“It’s really found traction in these communities, unlike anything that I’ve really seen. If I had $1 for every time somebody said it was a ‘done deal,’ I could probably retire at this point…. [P]eople need to hear that … it is achievable, and it is feasible that this can be done.”