Hoosier Action and 26 allied organizations are urging local governments across the state to immediately enact a moratorium on new data center development, which has outpaced communities’ abilities to mitigate the harm these construction projects may have.

“I’ve never met an issue that has more broad-based political support across the spectrum,” said Will Stauffer, an organizer with Hoosier Action.

Over the past two years, nearly 60 large-scale data center projects have been launched in Indiana, as companies join the gold rush to build infrastructure for the rapid buildout of artificial intelligence.

In February, nearly 200 Hoosiers from more than 40 counties gathered at the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis for a “People’s Hearing on Data Centers,” and have flooded town halls across the state to voice their opposition to these projects, such as the $2 billion, 1-million square foot data center that the Washington-based Sabey Corp. wants to build in Decatur Township.

Sabey estimates the project will require a million gallons of groundwater to fill the facility’s cooling tanks at startup, followed by an additional  two to three hundred thousand gallons of water for every year the facility operates.. 

“These data centers are going to be living for a lot longer than I will, or you will,” said Hoosier Action member Kagan Cain. “This issue is going to impact my kids, and the kids they have, and the kids they have.”