Wary of data center health impacts, some rural Alabamians are fighting back

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Linda Hall is bracing to pick up and move out of her house of 40 years. For the second time.

“It hurts my heart to have to go through it again at my age,” she says.

She’s 85, and lives in Lowndes County, Alabama, about 20 miles west of Montgomery. Forty years ago, a plastics plant went in right behind her house and bought up her property. The property she moved to is now less than a hundred yards from a proposed hyperscale data center.

“We've been told, ‘You won't recognize this area here in 10 years,’” she says. “Well, I believe that. Because you can drive through my community that I raised my family in right across the road, and all the houses are gone. You won't recognize any of it.”

There are more than 1,500 data centers in the process of getting approved and built. And given the AI industry’s ambitions, that number’s only going to grow.

The vast majority of the facilities are in rural areas, according to Pew Research Center.

Lowndes County is rural — like 13-people-per-square-mile-rural. It’s also got no zoning laws. So, it’s an attractive place for a data center.

“It's at the intersection of two highways, has a large 500 kV transmission line passing through it,” said Sarah Allen, VP of Development for Cloverleaf, the data center developer. “And [it] has an existing water system in place that can serve the site.”

But the site has downsides: It’s in the county’s most densely populated census tract, and nearly one in three people in Lowndes County live below the poverty line. That comes with health problems.

“You have in Lowndes County a higher rate of asthma … you also have higher rates of heart disease,” said Rob Friedman with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “That facility is going to perpetuate and exacerbate that burden.”

He said the culprit is the massive backup generators, which burn diesel when they’re running.

“That pollution has been linked to asthma, cognitive decline, heart disease, and even premature death,” he said.

And then there’s noise. No zoning laws means no noise limits. But the developer promises to keep it to 55 decibels – about as loud as a coffee maker or a conversation. That’s quiet enough to prevent hearing loss, but still loud enough to disrupt sleep.

“We've been down here 18 years. This is an area where we wanted to retire,” said Veronica Lane, who lives right next to the project site. “I have lupus. I walk every morning. I don't want that in my neighborhood at all because it's going to interfere with my health.”

Lowndes County’s other big health issue is wastewater. Clay in the soil makes it hard to deal with, and the infrastructure to do it right is expensive.

“This data center, and the economic development it would bring and the taxes it would bring, are a huge source of revenue that could pay for the water and wastewater that people deserve in their homes and businesses,” said David Berry, CEO of the developer Cloverleaf.

Taxes from the data center would nearly quadruple the local school budget and triple the county budget, based on reported figures. The facility would also bring in 225 full-time jobs, and $1 million pledged for local programs. Some local residents say some local organizations are refusing to take any of that money.

“We’re not against development. We’re not against moving ahead,” said Lori Russell, who lives next to the project site. “We want to see good things happen to this county, but it never seems to be the things that we really need. We could use a grocery store. We could use a medical facility. We could use a good restaurant.”