Residents in Monterey Park, California, became the first in the US to vote on a permanent ban on datacenters on Tuesday, and early results indicate a resounding victory for the prohibition.
While many cities and counties have already passed temporary or indefinite moratoriums via their local governments, Monterey Park would be the first to do so through a ballot initiative.
The ballot measure needs a majority vote – at least 51% – to win. As of 2am Pacific Time, 86.3% of the more than 7,000 votes counted so far were in favor of banning datacenters. While it can take days to finalize election results, the stark gap was enough evidence for Jose Sanchez, a city councilmember, to claim a “landslide victory” for residents who don’t want to live near datacenters.
“[This] shows unequivocally that residents in Monterey Park do not want datacenters in their community,” Sanchez said. “We hope that other communities will use the model set by residents here in Monterey Park as inspiration to stop data centers from encroaching in their backyard.”
Monterey Park’s city council had already passed an indefinite moratorium on datacenters in April, after growing anger towards HMC StratCap, an investment company that was pushing to put one in the city, located in the Los Angeles region. (Developers have since withdrawn the application; the project would have covered nearly 250,000 sq ft.)
Residents worried about negative environmental effects, increasing utility prices and the proximity to homes.
There are a few instances of municipalities turning to ballot measures to fight back against datacenters, although Monterey county appears to be the most forceful so far. In Port Washington, Wisconsin, voters approved a measure that requires local officials get voters’ approval before offering datacenter developers tax incentives. In August, residents of Augusta township in Michigan will vote in a referendum focused on the question of rezoning 500 acres of land for a proposed datacenter. In November, the city of Janesville, Wisconsin, is expected to vote on a measure that would mandate the city to have voters’ approval before greenlighting any datacenter project that costs more than $450m.
Nationally, seven in 10 Americans oppose the construction of AI datacenters in their local areas, according to a new Gallup poll.
Councilmember Jose Sanchez says city council members in Monterey Park pursued a ballot measure to “make the ban on datacenters a lot more permanent” and that it would hold more weight in court, as HMC Stratcap had threatened to sue over a potential extension of the moratorium and the ballot measure. (Developers have since indicated they won’t be pursuing legal action.)
The ballot measure asked voters to weigh in on banning “data centers citywide to protect air quality, drinking water resources and public health; prevent impacts to electricity and water rates”. The rule will stay in place “until ended by voters”.
HMC Stratcap…
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