Big Tech opens data-center doors as $130B in AI projects stall

Amazon's community open house at Columbia High School in Burbank, Washington on August 11 drew about 300 people. Outside, protesters chanted through a megaphone and held signs reading 'We need water not billionaires' and 'Water > AI.' The event centered on a proposed $4.8 billion data center complex at Wallula Gap in Walla Walla County, where the Walla Walla Anti Data Center League is pressing the county for a one-year moratorium while it studies the project.

That scene sits at the center of a Wall Street Journal report by Simonetti and Bobrowsky framing the fight in these words: 'Big tech companies are battling a volcanic grassroots backlash that threatens the foundations of the AI boom.'

The numbers around that backlash are stark. Data Center Watch tallied 75 major projects worth roughly $130 billion that were blocked or delayed in Q1 2026 alone, roughly matching the scale of all of 2025 in a single quarter. The count of active opposition groups more than doubled, from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 by March, spanning 49 states. More than 300 state-level data center bills were filed in the first six weeks of the year, and statewide moratorium proposals surfaced in 14 states.

Some fights are already over. A $12 billion data center campus in Wisconsin was scrapped after community pushback, Meta halted plans for a mega data center after local backlash, and seven hyperscalers signed on earlier this year to a Trump administration Ratepayer Protection Pledge that says their data center projects won't impose higher costs on other electricity customers.

This is the latest in a run of AI infrastructure coverage on the tracker, following the recent story that Meta and BlackRock's $14B El Paso data center is only partially insured.