The Town That Wants a Data Center Next Door
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A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Worzel onto The David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.
This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hannah Rosen. The people versus power showdown of the moment revolves around data centers. A tech giant racing to build one near a town versus the people who live there. I'm sure you've seen videos of a town meeting somewhere in Louisiana or Texas or Iowa. A longtime resident outraged by local leaders who are capitulating to Amazon or Meta or Google. Near me in Northern Virginia is the largest cluster of data centers anywhere. This week, we have a story from reporter Ethan Brooks, where the battle lines in this war between data centers and small towns are playing out in a really unusual way. Ethan will take it from here.
The first time Caitlin Hilton saw the old rundown farm on Smith Road in Chesterville, Maine, she knew that this was the place.
I drove up by myself one day and I just, it was the middle of February, it was negative five and I just thought it was so beautiful and I was like, that's everything we've wanted.
She bought the farm with her husband in 2022, and they went to work. They planted corn, potatoes, and onions, fought rats and weeds, slayed a weasel in the chicken coop with an axe. Four years later, when I visited, there was a new roof on the house, a fire pit, and a flower garden. There was Caitlin's daughter, who had stolen my microphone and is now whispering something into it. There was lots done and lots left to do. Then, one day this March, Caitlin saw a headline. The town next to Caitlin's, a town named Jay, had plans to build a data center.
I was really shocked to hear about that. We border Jay. It's only a mile down the road is the Jay line. So I just started researching.
If you were to search data center in March, 2026, you'd find a lot of credible information about dangerous pollutants in the air in Memphis, vanishing groundwater in New Mexico, massive electrical bills in Virginia and Illinois, noise pollution in Texas and on and on. And now a data center was coming to Maine, the first in the state, just five miles away from Caitlin. She worried about how a data center might affect the environment and what it might do to her farm.
So I reached out to Melanie and sent her an email, and she literally called me in 20 minutes.
Melanie Sachs is a member of the Maine House of Representatives. Sachs told Caitlin that there was a bill she'd proposed that could stop the data center project. It was a statewide moratorium, coming up for a vote in just a couple of weeks. The moratorium would put a stop to large data center construction in the state of Maine until 2027. The bill was called LD-307, and it would kill the project in Jay. So Caitlin got to work. In the afternoons, while her daughter napped, she wrote letters and emails. One letter she sent to 165 people in the legislature, manually copying and pasting each email address. She signed her emails, make today wonderful, and then she waited.
A moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers is not such a radical idea.
Caitlin wasn't the only one campaigning against data centers. Across the country, a weird coalition had formed, one that included both Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon.
All they're trying to do is to ram it down your throat.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Saying no to these data centers being built.
And Matt Walsh. And really the ultimate message to these people is, well, you're screwed.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–4:26
2
What sparked local opposition to data centers and how common is it nationally?
4:26–8:12
3
How did Caitlin discover the nearby data-center proposal and what were her initial concerns?
8:12–17:34
4
What was LD-307 and why did Maine lawmakers pass a statewide moratorium on data-center construction?
17:34–23:34
5
Why did Governor Janet Mills veto the moratorium and how did Jay influence her decision?
23:34–33:19
6
Why did the town of Jay support a data center despite national backlash and secrecy tactics?
33:19–39:15