Resistance to building AI data centers in the US intensified in the second quarter of 2026: municipalities and citizen initiatives halted or froze construction projects worth 68 billion dollars, according to a new report from analysis firm Data Center Watch, first reported by Bloomberg. That left 45 projects stalled – nearly as many as in the prior quarter.
Communities block several billion-dollar projects one by one
Several of the affected proposals are individually worth billions. In Appomattox County, Virginia, the responsible authority fully scrapped the three-billion-dollar Project Hercules from developer Avaio. Archbald Borough’s council in Pennsylvania rejected the planned Project Scott data center by a vote of five to zero. In North Carolina, the developer withdrew the New Hill Digital Campus entirely, while Project Tango in Palm Beach County, Florida, remains stuck in permitting. The six-billion-dollar Project Lincoln in Oldham County, Kentucky, has also not moved past the planning stage. Residents had previously raised similar concerns about air quality and water use over a gas plant built for an Amazon data center in Texas, where the environmental group Public Citizen warned of respiratory harm. All five cases follow a pattern repeating across the US: permitting bodies and city councils are increasingly turning down large-scale data center plans once residents publicly object.
Citizen groups are growing faster than construction volume
The resistance has become structural. Data Center Watch now counts 843 active citizen groups in 49 of the 50 states, with only Hawaii excluded so far. Thirty state legislatures have also passed or introduced their own rules on siting, grid connections, or water use for data centers. The first quarter of 2026 still saw a larger construction volume disrupted, around 130 billion dollars across 75 cases – but according to Data Center Watch analyst Miquel Vila, the number of active groups has more than doubled since then, pointing to a lasting trend rather than a one-off spike. A petition against a Tennessee project gathered more than 500,000 signatures within the quarter, roughly a third of all petition signatures the report counted. Data Center Watch is also logging early, isolated cases of organized protest outside the US, including in Europe, Australia, and South Africa.
What matters now is whether operators like Amazon, Meta, or OpenAI adjust their site selection to this new map of resistance, or increasingly shift toward states with looser rules. The contrast with Germany stands out: while US communities tighten their requirements, the German government is currently easing reporting obligations for data centers at home. Whether that gives US operators pause will show at the earliest in Data Center Watch’s next report, covering the third quarter, due this fall.
