Data Centers 101

What are data centers and why are they coming to Michigan?

A year or two ago, most of us weren’t familiar with data centers, the massive processing and storage plants for digital information. But now they're regularly popping up in the news...and in our backyards.

Here in the Mitten, Big Tech companies are working with our elected representatives to build more data centers. What makes Michigan so attractive to billionaires from Silicon Valley? Data centers use massive quantities of fresh water to cool their servers, and we are the Great Lakes State.

What Are Data Centers?

To ask the looming question—one that may well become a defining question of the 2026 election: what are data centers, and what do we do about them?—we first have to take a step back and try our best to simply explain what data is.

In the context of data centers, data is information rendered into a form computers can use and understand, much like genes are information encoded in DNA that cells can read and use to build and regulate living systems. The only difference being that DNA is a very specific kind of biological “instructional manual” shaped by evolution, whereas “data” can be almost any kind of information we choose to encode.

Data can be anything ordinary from a simple text message or a photo, or something as consequential and private as a medical or bank record. It also includes generative artificial intelligence (AI), like ChatGPT. (ChatGPT-creator OpenAI is currently building a 2.2-million-square-foot data center in Saline Township outside of Ann Arbor.)

The key point is that while we like to think of “data” as some ethereal, intangible substance floating around in the “cloud,” it isn’t. Data has to live somewhere.

Data centers are that “somewhere,” as they store all our data—whether we want them to or not. Think of them as the industrial plants of the digital age. They turn our ostensibly weightless, formless “cloud” into something that has a very real footprint on the land, electricity grids, water tables, and local infrastructure.

Effectively, data centers are massive windowless warehouses packed to the brim with stacks and stacks of computer servers. The servers are what store (and constantly process) our data, but boy are they hungry. They consume staggering amounts of electricity to run 24/7, and then even more energy and water to keep the servers from overheating.

This is why they constantly “hum” at a low frequency, because a data center is essentially a giant cooling plant for computer servers, replete with thousands of high-speed fans, industrial HVAC units, chillers, pumps, and electrical equipment running nonstop.

Data Center Risks

Yet behind their constant low-frequency hum, data centers are exacting a growing toll on local communities in Michigan and beyond. They often strain local watersheds and aquifers already burdened by other demands, pollute the very water and air we rely on for survival, pile new load onto already-deteriorating electrical grids, and increasingly, they disrupt the quiet life of the communities they enter.

According to nonpartisan research hub Brookings, “it is projected that AI’s energy needs could account for as much as 21% of all electricity usage by 2030.”

Furthermore, Brookings reports that some data centers “consume as much as 500,000 gallons [of water] per day, making them a substantial draw on what is a limited resource in many communities.”

The Harvard Business Review finds that data centers “not only strain already stressed power grids but also create air pollution, including fine particulate matter, resulting in significant respiratory-related health consequences that are estimated to cost up to $20 billion per year in the United States by 2028.”

A recent expose in Rolling Stone referred to one farming community’s fight against Amazon data centers as “Oregon’s Flint.” Families close to the data centers tested several times above federal limits for nitrates, with some readings as high as seven times the legal standard and residents reporting clusters of rare cancers, kidney failure, and miscarriages.

Why Are Developers Choosing Rural Michigan?

As the demand for AI accelerates on a global scale, the infrastructure behind it has expanded just as fast, especially in rural and resource-rich regions like Michigan.

Why here? Cheap land, cold air, and access to abundant freshwater make Michigan a developer’s dream.

Yet it’s not only our geography or natural resources that make Michigan appealing. Legislators in Lansing have effectively rolled out a welcome mat in the form of major tax exemptions championed by Governor Whitmer, including sales and use tax breaks on data-center equipment that can last for decades.

To local residents, scientists, public-health advocates, and environmental groups, the dangerous concoction of natural abundance plus major tax subsidies reads less like “innovation” or “progress” and more like a flashing red herring.

Downstate in Saline, for example, the first hyperdata center passed through local political channels amid limited public transparency. Saline resident and director of the newly formed Rural Defense Fund, Tim Bruneau, summarized this dynamic succinctly:

“When the township board voted no to rezone the [data center] property, the developer Related Digital sued. The entire project was fast-tracked, and now DTE wants to do the same, filing an ex parte to circumvent the MPSC process and public scrutiny. DTE and Related Digital want this project to be treated as critical infrastructure, like a hospital, school, or roads. Well, it’s not critical, and there is no demonstrated need for a data center in Saline Township.”

In Our Backyard

Last fall, a similar fight came to Kalkaska. Locals banded together to oppose a data center slated for state-owned land—what would have been one of the largest facilities of its kind in the country.

Kalkaska resident and renowned musician Seth Bernard attended the meetings and framed what many felt was happening in real time.

“Hyperscale AI data centers serving private companies are being fast-tracked due to the merging of state and corporate power,” he says, “bypassing public input and forcing working-class communities to subsidize industries that have no oversight, powering an unprecedented upward transfer of wealth with no tangible benefit to the communities that host them.”

The locals eventually won when the developer withdrew the application—what was a rare victory in an overwhelmingly stacked system. But several locals aren’t convinced the threat is gone for good.

Kalkaska resident Heather Wysor says, “We may have stopped it on state land this time, but the threat is still looming. If developers want a data center here badly enough, they can still pursue it on private land, and by the time the public realizes what’s happening, the deal is already half done.”

“What Big Tech failed to recognize is that Kalkaska is unique,” Wysor continues. “Every neighbor has a story about a chemical scar left on the local landscape, oftentimes from gas extraction. And what’s funny about this entire situation is that it’s the same oil and gas company that is pushing for the data center in Kalkaska. They’ve proven themselves to be untrustworthy neighbors.”

Speaking on past abuses of industry in Kalkaska, Wysor notes that the community’s memory is long.

“We haven’t forgotten how we were treated when it was no longer profitable for industry to be here,” she says. “The spontaneous organic gathering of Kalkaskans we saw in response to the data center, from all sides of the political spectrum, was a true testament to how far Kalkaska residents are willing to go to protect their communities, their hunting lands, their water systems, and their natural resources. We’ve been left high and dry by corporations here for too long.”

Fighting Across the State

The fight is far from over for rural Michigan. As more data centers are successfully fought downstate, the likelihood that developers look north becomes more probable.

Just like the cryptomining that has ravaged the Upper Peninsula, “data centers can have real, lasting impacts on energy costs, local infrastructure and quality of life in rural communities,” says Kalvin Carter, director of Up North Advocacy, a leader in the fight against the cryptomines that have disturbed local residents and harmed schools in Sault Ste. Marie.

Cryptomining requires running specialized computers nonstop to solve mathematical puzzles that verify cryptocurrency transactions. Similar to data centers, cryptomining machines run hot and nonstop, so operators often rely on loud industrial cooling systems that draw a huge load from local power grids.

“Protecting our towns and natural areas means working together, sharing information, listening to one another, and making sure local voices are centered before big outside interests move in,” Carter continues. “The Upper Peninsula and northern Michigan deserve development that respects our people and our shared environments.”

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