This informaton is from Sierra Club and other organizations' resousrces and Coulee Region Sierra Club Action Gatherins in March and April 2026 on data centers
Links to learn more:
League of Women Voters of the La Crosse Area Winter Webinar: Environmental Impacts of Data Centers LWVLaCrosse.org https://www.lwvlacrosse.org › program Go to Events/Programs button, and choose recordings for ‘25-26
Union of Concerned Scientists Webinar on its Scientific Study Data Centers: Data Centers Power Play: How Clean Energy Can Meet Rising Electricity Demand While Delivering Climate and Health Benefits. use this link to access the recording.
Alliance of Great Lakes, A Finite Resource…https://greatlakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AGL_WaterUse_Report_Aug2025_Final.pdf
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/32d6m0d1#page=50,
A New Analysis: Data Center Water Consumption Will be Far Higher than Tech Companies claim. https://www.cleanwisconsin.org/new-analysis-data-center-water-consumption-will-be-far-higher-than-tech-companies-claim/
Exposing the Dark Side of America’s AI Data Center. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dt-8TDOFqkQA&ved=2ahUKEwjnodGg5K6TAxVXyOYEHTowHl4Q3aoNegQIFRAL&usg=AOvVaw3tSFjE7D7fKgz4aYOtVZwP
Sierra Club Data Center Toolkit - “Hyperscale Data Centers in Wisconsin: Big Tech Unchecked”
The People Say No - Resisting Data Centers Toolkit from Media Justice - https://mediajustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/MediaJustice-The-People-Say-No-Resisting-Data-Centers-Toolkit.pdf
Dr. Chris Millser's full April 2026 article:
Together We Can
"When two violins are placed in a room,
if a chord on one violin is struck,
the other violin will sound that same note.
Know how powerful you are.
Know you can make music in the people around you
just by playing your own strings."
Andrea Gibson
We met on March 20th at Unitarian Universalist Church to become educated about the explosion of Hyperscale Data Centers. We want to acknowledge the UU church for welcoming us so warmly into their space.
We welcomed Representative Tara Johnson as a guest speaker. We are so grateful for her time and energy that she took to connect with us and to explore Data Centers with us. She gave us a detailed history of the attempts at cultivating a law to address Data Centers. None of them have met with success. The legislature has adjourned without Senate voting on the new Data Center Bill: Assembly Bill 840 (AB840) & Senate Bill 729 (SB729) - Data Center Accountability Act. More information needs to be obtained about the exact requirements this bill establishes. Tara answered questions from the audience and a lively discussion ensued.
The political actions taken were to sign individual letters to the 3 Public Service Commissioners detailing our concerns. These were signed by the 23 people present. We also sent thank you notes to Rep Jill Billings and State Senator Brad Pfaff for their sponsoring one of the Data Center Bills.
Pizza was served.
Next Session: April 17th from 5:30-7:30. Data Centers Continued. All are invited.
Chris Miller presented a power point on informing us about the concerns about data centers. Her power point is viewable at https://tinyurl.com/crscdatactrppt
Basic Points:
What is a Hyperscale Data Center: A very large campus housing buildings that hold networked computer servers, serving AI, cloud storage, cryptocurrency.
Wisconsin is seeing a Data Center explosion.
Wisconsin is vulnerable to Data Center encroachment because it lacks a clean energy requirement written into law
It also lacks an integrated resource planning requirements which would help keep utilities accountable for their long-term energy investments and provide more opportunities for things like stakeholder engagement.
The state budget established broad sales and use tax exemptions to attract certified data centers that include land, equipment and electricity exemptions.
Utility companies have actively recruited these large data centers.
Additionally, in an executive order last January, President Trump encouraged a loosening of economic and environmental regulations to pave the way for hyper-scale (major cloud service providers that can house over 5000 servers) data centers.
A more recent executive order “seeks to limit the ability of states to regulate artificial intelligence, while attempting to thwart some existing state laws.”
Wisconsin has water and land that these Data Centers need.
The Unanswered and Worrisome Questions
about Data Centers
What is the demand on local water resources?
What is the impact on local electrical capacity?
What is the ecological impact?
Who will pay the cost?
What is the sound and light pollution impact?
Will be long-term employment opportunities vs near
Will there be only term construction jobs?
Will there truly be local revenues that are recouped?
The Problems
Lack of transparency: Use of non-disclosure agreements (NDA’s) between the company and the utilities and local government. Also, companies declare information such as water usage is a trade secret.
Rapid Growth without plans
Energy Consumption: for example: Microsoft Phase 1(450 MW or megawatts) plus Vantage full buildout (3.5 GW or gigawatt a full buildout) equals the demand of 4.3 million Wisconsin homes…in a state with only 2.8 million housing units. A GW is 1 billion watts…a megawatt is 1 million watts. A kilowatt (KW) is 1000 watts. Running a dishwasher takes one KW/hour. A typical light bulb is 60 watts.
Water Consumption: Clean potable water used to cool data centers. Water is not returned to ground…it evaporates. In 2 years, AI water use is expected to hit 4.2- 6.6 billion cubic meters or …enough to serve the population of 5 Denmarks. Microsoft could divert 7 million gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan or 2,555 million gallons a year, which is what 84000 homes use in a year. Data centers are not being transparent about their water usage. Fewer than 1/3 are currently tracking water usage and there is no requirement to do so. There is also Closed loop cooling which uses less water, but more energy and there are more chemicals used in this system. Companies have not disclosed what chemicals are in those systems.
Environmental Impacts: Companies are returning to use of gas which is about 90% methane for powering the Data Centers. These emit carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, lead, carbon dioxide. Methane has 80x the warming potential of carbon over 20 years. As well they will depend on diesel fuel for backup generators as these centers are scheduled to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week…all year.
Land Impacts: Each building can cover 500,000 square feet. There are 2,000 acre campuses…( a football field is 1.3 acres). Farmland is permanently lost. There are no clear plans in the contracts to hold companies accountable if they should abandon their data center.
Who Pays: utilities are building billions of dollars of new generation transmission lines, coal plants, solar farms etc. Data centers could be responsible for over a third of electricity costs by 2050 or 47 billion dollars under the current policies. These costs are usually socialized or spread out among all the customers. Yet, there are no adequate proposals or policies that will protect the public from having to pick up the cost of these data centers. The recent discussions between the big tech companies and Trump to have data centers cover the costs were no more than a promise…there is no legally binding policy or law.
Solutions: Coalition Building. Lobbying. Sunshine laws or public access to public records and open meetings which override NDA’s and trade secrets but commissioners and local government do not seem to be honoring them. Community engagement: 4 projects were cancelled last year due to local efforts. Media coverage such as with Union of Concerned Scientists report that these centers could be powered by clean energy. Getting yourself educated: read Tool Kit for Hyperscale Data Centers in Wisconsin: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/default/files/2025-12/big-tech-unchecked-toolkit-3.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjRuqfnl7-TAxXewskDHWZ9CTUQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1mcsVq-IX0FH-N1sZ60n3K
“The saddest aspect of life right now
is that science gathers knowledge faster than society
“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster”.
Carl Sagan
So let’s get ourselves educated.
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