"The immense hype surrounding AI has caused enormous data centers to crop up across the country, triggering significant opposition. It's not just the loss of land: enormous power needs are pushing the grid into meltdown and driving up local electricity prices, catching the attention of politicians and their irate constituents. One 86-year-old farmer in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, has heard enough."
"The farmer was offered $60,000 per acre to build a data center on his property. But giving up his family legacy wasn't in the cards for him. "I was not interested in destroying my farms," he told WPMT. "That was the bottom line. It really wasn't so much the economic end of it. I just didn't want to see these two farms destroyed.""
Rapid AI-driven demand has spurred large data centers across the country, generating local opposition as huge land footprints, high power consumption, and heavy water use strain grids and raise electricity prices. An 86-year-old Cumberland County farmer, Mervin Raudabaugh, refused more than $15 million in development offers, rejected $60,000-per-acre proposals, and instead sold development rights for just under $2 million to a conservation trust to keep the land farmland forever. Social media praised the decision as principled. Similar disputes have arisen in Wisconsin where a planned 600-acre center and resistance from long-term landowners underscore tensions between tech infrastructure and rural communities.
Read at Futurism
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