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'Media Need to Report on the Real Cost of Data Centers': Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed MediaJustice's Jai Dulani and Vivek Bharathan of the No Desert Data Center Coalition about data center opposition for the September 26, 2025, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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MediaJustice: The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South

MediaJustice (9/9/25 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: Many people still think vaguely of digital technology as something that happens inside your phone, or your computer. It seems divorced from physical nature; it's in the ether. In reality, technology requires massive environmental and economic resources localized in real communities.

The People Say No: ([link removed]) Resisting Data Centers in the South is a new report from the group MediaJustice ([link removed]) that explores with research and case studies how tech corporations are, as it says, “quietly draining the South,” while media coverage talks in terms of growth and progress toward an inevitable future.

We're joined now by Jai Dulani from Media Justice, and with Vivek Bharathan from the No Desert Data Center Coalition in Tucson, Arizona. Welcome, both of you, to CounterSpin.

Jai Dulani: Great to be here.

Vivek Bharathan: Thank you for having us.

JJ: I saw this quote ([link removed]) from an Oklahoma representative:

I think if you ask your average person on the street, "How much water does a data center use to operate every day," or "every year," the vast majority of people would say, "What's a data center?"

And she added, “I think that this industry is so far ahead of where the knowledge that Oklahomans currently have [is] that we've got to catch up.”

Now, she's talking about Oklahoma, of course, but this is a key idea, that something is already well-launched, and packaged up very shiny and futuristic, before the general public understands, not just the costs, but even what's happening—much less why it's happening where it's happening.

So in simply connecting the airy talk about AI, for example, to real earth and water, this report is filling a void, but it's also very much about whose earth and water we're talking about. So what would you say, in general terms, this report is trying to do? What's it trying to say?

JD: Absolutely. So this report is uplifting how Black, brown and working-class communities in the South are bearing the brunt of the environmental and economic costs behind data centers. We look at how Big Tech is draining the South, even in drought-prone areas; how the South is paying more for electricity; and how the South is getting locked into decades of fossil fuel infrastructure, because of the energy demands of data centers.

JJ: And I think it's important that the report grounds this data center boom in the history of the South, and regions in the South, being used as testing grounds or dumping grounds in the past. Talk a little bit more, if you could, about the political and historical context here.

JD: Absolutely. So this year marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina ([link removed]) , and that was a devastating example of climate crisis and structural racism. And it showed state abandonment, combined with criminalization, that essentially led to so much preventable death and displacement.

And also Big Oil has been decimating the South ([link removed] Deepwater Horizon oil spill,lasted for over a decade) for decades, and the South has been facing so much industrial pollution in water and air for decades. And so Big Tech is essentially following these footsteps, and compounding so much environmental racism that the South has been disproportionately facing for a long time.

And that context and history is so important when we look at how Big Tech is coming into towns and cities that have higher rates of asthma and cancer already, and now are being faced with even more air pollution that compounds these harms.

JJ: All right. Well, Vivek, for many people, this is a new connection of dots, but it's not new for you. You've been working on this locally. Tell us about the state of resistance, because we're talking about informational voids, but obviously many communities perforce actually do understand what's going on here. What have you learned from your experience in Tucson ([link removed]) ?
Vivek Bharathan

Vivek Bharathan: "It's kind of like they came back with a redesigned and crappier Death Star, and we have to fight it for a second time."

VB: What we've learned from this is that, essentially, these giant data centers come in, brought in by multi-billion-dollar corporations that are really here to extract resources, and they find cooperation from local representatives who have administrations in support of economic development. But this local economic development often looks like taking these big projects that chase big money, but also come with a lot of blood.

And what we found was that our local representatives were only listening to these corporations. They were put in a position by their administrations at both the county and city levels to really only hear the pro side. And the counter-arguments only came from the public at these meetings. So they just weren't equipped to make an informed decision about whether or not these data centers are good for us. And they went ahead and voted on them anyway.

So what we had to do, really, was mobilize as a community, and this was really a multiracial, multigenerational effort to come together and say no to this data center. And, fortunately for us, even though the county sale went through, the city council also had to approve a portion of it, and they said no to that. Unfortunately for us, it's back in the county's hands, because the corporation still owns the property, they still own the land, and they're planning to go ahead with this project anyway, despite this overwhelming community turnout against it.

So we're still in the fight. It's back to round two. It's kind of like they came back with a redesigned and crappier Death Star, and we have to fight it for a second time.

JJ: I know that MediaJustice, in general, is about centering the voices of communities who are most harmed by inequities in media and technology, and who share the idea that those people should be in leadership in the resistance. And there is, as Vivek is just telling us, plenty of resistance. But, Jai Dulani, there's plenty of resistance across the South as well, isn't there?

JD: Absolutely. Wanda Mosley, who is founder of My Vote Matter ([link removed]) , has been organizing in Atlanta, where Atlanta has seen a 211% increase ([link removed]) in data centers' development since 2023. And that's the fastest rate of growth in the country.

And Atlanta's water supply is among the smallest of any major US metro area. So water supplies are really vulnerable to drought there. And Meta's data center in Newton County ([link removed]) , Georgia, is taking up 10% of the county's total water use on a daily basis, which is putting Newton County on track to be in a water deficit by 2030.

And so Wanda has been going to town hall meetings, and has been saying that what she's seeing is only the companies and developers are getting airtime at these town halls. And so it's been really hard to be given a voice at these town halls, but she and others are organizing across the South.
Jai Dulani

Jai Dulani: "This is because of community pushback, communities that are saying, this is not worth the environmental threat that these data centers pose."

And that is making a difference, by being relentless, by demystifying the economic development propaganda, and talking about the reality that these data centers don't create jobs, and, actually, through tax breaks, they are taking money away from states. Georgia is projected to give up $296 million ([link removed]) in tax revenue this year because of data centers.

And so in terms of wins, we're seeing in Bessemer, Alabama, communities have successfully paused ([link removed]) a $14.5 billion proposed data center, so we have to keep paying attention to that site, and supporting it. In Warrenton, Virginia, residents voted out all town council members ([link removed]) who were supporting an Amazon data center, and now they newly elected a town council that voted to ban data centers for Warrenton.

And in Georgia, we're seeing a lot of moratoriums being passed in different counties. The Monroe County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to deny ([link removed]) a data center proposal that was going to rezone 900 acres of land. And this is because of community pushback, communities that are saying, this is not worth the environmental threat that these data centers pose.

JJ: Well, thank you. And Vivek, just to kick it back to you for a second, you talked about, in the Tucson example, a kind of fight between various levels of government, which is just encouragement, if we needed it, that if you might “lose at one front,” it does not mean that there might not be another point of intervention.

But what I'm hearing from both of you is that one of the key points of resistance is information. So if I could ask you, Vivek, what were the kind of myths that organizers needed to address in order to push back on this data center? What was the big information that was coming through that needed to be interrogated and challenged?

VB: There was one term, “water positivity,” ([link removed]) the idea that you could reclaim water, push it through this thing, and that somehow you'd end up with more water at the end of it. And the myth of water positivity is two things. One is, there's this absurd terminology, “wet water” versus “paper water,” where wet water is what we think of as water, which is what's sitting in this water bottle next to me, and paper water is the right to water.

And so, essentially, what they're trying to say is that they can be "water positive" by generating paper water, and that can look like anything from incentives to communicate with communities to reduce water consumption, which is absurd, to essentially getting water from other places. And that just means stealing other communities' water to replenish ours. And we weren't having any of that.
Desert Dwellers Against Big Data

No Desert Data Center Coalition ([link removed])

I do want to go back to one thing that Dulani said earlier about just the processes, and how these town halls did propaganda sessions. That was our experience as well. At the city level, the city manager basically set up what they were calling, I forget the term, but it was essentially town halls, but they really were just propaganda sessions for these projects.

And what ended up happening is once we saw that the only people who had seats at the table were proponents of the project, including our private electric company, GEP, the corporation itself, and our public water utility, all speaking for the project. And once we realized that these sessions were going to be just like that, we got loud and we got disruptive.

And if anyone's listening to this and wondering how to resist these sessions—just don't accept the term of the argument. Don't accept the term that they set forward, even in the process. Make sure that everyone in your community is there, as many people as you can turn out, and really just make it clear that you oppose it, and that you even oppose the terms in which the case is being presented.

JJ: I love that, because the questions of who gets to speak extend from the town halls, of course, to the journalism around these questions. And so I would like to ask you, finally, if you have thoughts on media.

I will say, I'm starting to see stories take a frame of “developers are saying this is going to be great, but communities have questions.” And we're kind of at the “can communities put in some studies in advance, and can we get some more information?” And I'm seeing local leaders and state level leaders saying, “Wait, wait, hold on a second.”

But I wonder, still, the community leaders are not the lead in the story: They're kind of below the fold; they're critics. I just wonder, from either of you, what would you look for media coverage that would actually fill a void here, and what would you like them to stop doing? And that might be too long a list, but in the time we have left, what would you hope for from reporters? Dulani, you can start, whichever of you.

JD: Yeah, I think what you mentioned is so important. When a story is simply regurgitating the press release from a big tech company or developer, that's not helpful. There is research ([link removed]) out there that says for every permanent full-time job at an operational data center, that's amounting to more than $2 million in terms of a tax break for every job. And so it's not worth it. It's a wealth transfer from taxpayers to shareholders of these companies. Communities are losing out. And so it is important to look at the lies around economic development and prosperity, and to really look at the environmental costs.

We're really being put in a position to compete with corporations around water. Farmland is being rezoned for these data centers. So you can't eat AI, you can't drink AI. This is the future that is being built before our eyes. And so media need to report on the reality of what the real cost of data centers is, and not just say communities have questions, but there's more and more data out there about the negative impact of data centers. So that has to be amplified.

JJ: Vivek, if you have something you'd like to add about what you'd hope to see at local or national level from media, please.

VB: I've found that when we're interviewed by local media, especially TV, there's a common framing where it'll kind of start with the electeds, and then they'll interview us for maybe five minutes, and we'll get maybe a sentence or two in about our position. And they really treat us like any, I don't know, I don't know what I'm trying to say here, but basically….

JJ: It's like “color,” like person on the street, is how I think of it.

VB: Exactly. And our coalition does actually have a lot of experts in it, and we have informed opinions, and we have information that really should be out there more. And I feel like we're never treated—like, there's the experts, there's the electeds, and then there's us, and we get zero, close to zero time. They just kind of show our faces to say we're there.

JJ: Absolutely. Well, I'm going to end there. We've been speaking with Vivek Bharathan and Jai Dulani. Thank you both very much for being with us today on CounterSpin.

VB: Thanks so much.

JD: Thank you for having us.
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