Voters just did something no U.S. city has ever done to stop AI data centers

Voters in one Los Angeles suburb just overwhelmingly rejected the development of data centers in their area—for good. In the latest sign that Americans are souring on artificial intelligence, in a special municipal election on June 2 the residents of Monterey Park, California, voted in favor of a permanent ban on data centers in their community. While other cities have voted to limit or pause new construction of data centers, Monterey Park is the first to vote to block data centers in perpetuity. Voters in Monterey Park, a city of around 60,000 in L.A. County, passed Measure NDC, which amends the city’s land use plan, to “prohibit data centers citywide to protect air quality, drinking water resources and public health; [and] prevent impacts to electricity and water rates.” In a fact sheet urging residents to vote yes on the ballot measure, Monterey Park Mayor Elizabeth Yang and members of the City Council cited environmental concerns, a lack of job creation, and the potential drain on local resources. “Once we allow data centers, it is very hard to remove them,” the argument in favor of the measure states. “A YES vote protects our city.” The proposition was added to Monterey Park’s ballot in March, after its City Council unanimously decided to let voters weigh in on the issue. The new citywide ban defines a data center as a building or space “used to house a large group of networked computer systems for data storage and processing for off site and on site users, including remote storage, processing, or distribution of large amounts of data.” Data center backlash grows Monterey Park’s decision to ban data centers wasn’t hypothetical. Australian Developer HMC StratCap planned on building a 250,000-square-foot data center in the city before local backlash killed the project earlier this year. HMC StratCap’s data center plan had quietly been in the works for years, but blew up after residents rallied against the project and pressured city officials who had previously supported it to get behind them. According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, HMC StratCap “became the city’s largest landowner after years of negotiations, clearances and hearings.” After initially threatening to pursue legal action to push the construction forward, the company backed off and said it wouldn’t fight Measure NDC. Data centers, once an inconspicuous piece of tech infrastructure, have taken the spotlight as sentiment against tech’s AI boom grows. A Gallup poll last month found that 7 out of 10 Americans oppose plans to build data centers in their area. Earlier this year, the Milwaukee suburb of Port Washington passed its own ballot measure to pump the brakes on local data center construction, requiring future projects to seek approval from voters before handing out tax breaks to developers. In April, Maine passed the first statewide moratorium on data center construction, blocking any of the resource-hungry tech power centers until late next year while the state evaluates their potential impacts.