Communities Blocked or Delayed Nearly $200 Billion in US Data Center Projects This Year

The tech giants building America's AI infrastructure are running into a wall they did not budget for: their own neighbors. Local communities are fighting proposed data centers town by town, and this year they are winning often enough to stall almost $200 billion in projects.

Between April and June, at least 45 data center projects worth nearly $68 billion were blocked or delayed, according to figures from the tracker Data Center Watch reported by Gizmodo. That followed roughly 75 projects worth about $130 billion disrupted in the first quarter. Together the two quarters add up to nearly $200 billion in stalled or dead proposals in the first half of 2026.

Data Center Watch, a project from 10a Labs, tracks grassroots opposition rather than court rulings or a federal ban. The number is a running tally of local fights, not a single policy that switched the industry off.

The pressure lands on companies that are spending like the buildout is guaranteed. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google are expected to pour at least $700 billion into AI infrastructure this year, and those data centers need enormous amounts of water and electricity to train and run the models. Residents keep raising the same worries: strain on local water supplies, pressure on the power grid, and what a hyperscale campus does to a small community.

The public mood backs them up. A Gallup survey in March found seven in ten Americans oppose building AI data centers in their local area, with 48 percent strongly opposed. Even Erin Brockovich has joined in, launching a crowdsourced map that collects community complaints about the facilities.

That backlash is turning into policy. New York became the first state to impose a statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, and even pro-business Texas ordered an audit of projects trying to connect to its grid. The fight is spreading well beyond the secret utility deals in Virginia and the House push to shield ratepayers from data center power bills that made the cost side of this visible earlier.

President Trump has pushed the other way, framing restrictions as a gift to China. "There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," he wrote on Truth Social this month. The residents blocking substations in their counties are not waiting to see how that argument plays out in Washington.