Recall campaigns target officials over data center approvals

Michigan residents seek recall over data center secrecy

In Lenox Township, a rural municipality about 40 miles north of Detroit, residents packed public meetings that sometimes lasted more than four hours, expressing outrage at what they described as a lack of transparency around a proposed “advanced technology and data center campus” promoted by the website Lenoxdatacenter.com. The site, which went live in May, did not disclose who wanted to build the facility. Township officials said no one had applied for a permit. But emails obtained by residents through open records requests showed that developers had reached out to the township supervisor and deputy supervisor seeking their support.

The perceived secrecy prompted residents to submit a petition seeking to recall four members of the Lenox board of trustees, which handles zoning, administration and municipal ordinances. “The community still has questions that aren’t being answered and the public deserves to have transparency,” a resident said at a June board meeting after trustees did not extend a four-month moratorium on data center development.

In Festus, Missouri, a city in a county where Donald Trump won 67% of the vote in 2024, residents filed a petition to recall the mayor and three council members over their approval of a $6 billion data center agreement with developer CRG Clayco. The developer had turned to Festus after residents in nearby St. Charles voiced strong opposition to a proposed project and voted to ban data centers there. In both locations, the developer did not reveal which tech company would operate the facility.

“The company usually goes public only after the decisive votes have been taken,” said Michael Bommarito, an entrepreneur and author of “How to Fight a Data Center.”

The Festus city council approved the agreement, which included the city’s support for a five-year personal property tax abatement. The mayor said the data center would bring “tremendous benefits to the people of Festus.” Even though a judge determined that residents had gathered enough signatures to trigger a recall election, the city council rejected the petition. Dennis McDonald, a Festus resident who teaches U.S. history at a local college, filed a legal challenge to the council’s decision. The council members facing recall declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

“If the community says: ‘Hey, we want to be involved and know what is going on here,’ and you just don’t involve them at every turn, it ends up building into where we are at now,” McDonald said.

In Yukon, Oklahoma, Joe Horn, a Republican and bank vice president, filed a petition to recall the mayor and vice mayor over their support for a proposed $1 billion data center. Horn cited concerns about an alleged lack of transparency and water usage. “We already ration water here in Yukon,” Horn said. “At what cost are we going to have this huge industrial building right across the street from one of our most beautiful neighborhoods?”

In May 2025, the city manager signed a non-disclosure agreement with Beltline Energy, a Georgia company, over a proposed deal. The city council later voted four to one to sell the land to Beltline. Vice Mayor Jeff Wootton resigned after the recall petition was filed, but said he believed the data center could “bring significant long-term economic benefits to Yukon.” Wootton said the intent “was never to conceal information from the public indefinitely but rather to protect sensitive negotiations during the preliminary stages.”

In nearby Luther, Oklahoma, the mayor had also been in discussion with Beltline and signed an NDA, but after seeing the backlash in Yukon, the city council in June passed a six-month moratorium on data center development.

The movement has drawn together residents across party lines. “It reflects the growing anxiety about AI writ large,” said Evan Sutton, a Seattle resident who works in strategic communications and has volunteered to help data center opponents in 10 states. “People feel like this technology is being shoved down our throats.”

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, said the opposition draws from different concerns on the left and right. “Many Democrats, especially those that are very environmentally minded, are deeply concerned about not just the energy use, but the use of polluting forms of electricity, like the re-invigoration of coal-fired power plants,” Leiserowitz said, “whereas Republicans and, frankly, many Democrats as well, are concerned about the potential economic consequences, especially on their own electricity and energy bills.”

The United States has more than 4,400 data centers, according to Data Center Map. A single facility can consume as much electricity as 2,000 homes, according to a University of Michigan report. Typical data centers use about 300,000 gallons of water per day for cooling, while large centers can use an estimated 5 million gallons daily — equivalent to the water use of a town with 10,000 to 50,000 residents, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

During the first quarter of 2026, at least 75 data center projects worth about $130 billion were blocked or delayed, according to Data Center Watch — roughly the same amount as all of 2025. In May and June alone, voters in states including California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas launched efforts to recall elected officials over their handling of data center proposals.