Saline Township in Washtenaw County, Michigan, has only a few thousand residents, but it has been thrust into the spotlight due to a $16 billion AI data center project. This data center named "Stargate" was developed by Related Digital. It was initially announced that the investment scale was about US$7 billion. The cost was later doubled and it was tied to Oracle and OpenAI's Stargate infrastructure plan. The latter is a long-term plan with a total scale of about US$500 billion to build a computing power base for new generation AI services including ChatGPT.
For the residents of Salin Town, this is not an abstract technological investment, but a real project that directly affects their lives. Their concerns focus on several major aspects: the project will bring huge amounts of water, place a heavy burden on the regional power grid, significantly increase traffic flow, and permanently transform originally agricultural land into an industrial park. After protests from residents and pressure from public hearings, the town council voted 4 to 1 last year to reject the developer's land rezoning application, leading many to believe the project had been "killed."
However, the plot took a turn in just a few days. Two days after the council voted no, Related Digital and the relevant landowners filed a lawsuit against the Town of Saline, alleging that the rejection constituted "exclusionary zoning" on the grounds that no parcels in the town were zoned industrial, effectively prohibiting such projects. Under the pressure of legal risks and litigation costs, the town of Salin quickly chose to settle. Shortly after the agreement was reached, the construction of the data center officially started.
As part of the compromise, the town government secured a "community benefit package" of approximately $14 million for the local area. The funding includes farmland protection, local fire department construction and other purposes, and also includes some environmental provisions and water use caps. The developer promised that the data center will use a closed-circuit cooling system instead of evaporative cooling to significantly reduce the scale of water consumption during daily operation, thereby weakening the risk of "draining the water source" that residents were most worried about before.
Compared with the water problem, electricity is more difficult. When the project is completed, the entire park is expected to draw about 1.4 gigawatts of electricity load from local utility DTE Energy, close to the output of a nuclear power plant. Related Digital said that the relevant transmission and distribution infrastructure will be funded and constructed by Oracle, and existing power users may also "save a little money" as fixed costs are diluted. But critics aren’t buying it, and many, including Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office, have questioned whether this so-called “protection” is enough to prevent ordinary users from ending up footing the bill for large corporate expansions.
The controversy in Saline quickly set off a chain reaction across Michigan. At least 19 towns or municipalities have passed temporary injunctions, suspending or cautiously reviewing new data center projects. The Washtenaw County Commission also publicly called on more communities to follow suit and "press the pause button" before evaluating the environmental, energy and land use impacts of such ultra-large infrastructure. At the state level, a bipartisan bill has been introduced proposing a statewide one-year moratorium on data center development. However, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and state House Speaker Matt Hall currently oppose the measure, leaving its prospects uncertain.
On a larger scale, AI data centers are rapidly falling out of touch with local communities. Previous reports pointed out that the construction of some housing projects in Texas has been delayed because the high salaries of AI data centers have poached key jobs such as electricians, making it difficult for housing development to proceed as planned. In Oregon, an Amazon data center has been linked to rare cases of cancer and miscarriages in a nearby area, sparking controversy and health safety concerns. In Festus, Missouri, voters even recalled half of the local city council members after they approved a $6 billion AI data center project.
Similar interest imbalances are not uncommon when traditional financial institutions expand data centers. A data center expansion project by JPMorgan in the United States received US$77 million in local tax breaks, but only created one permanent job during the long-term operation phase. This figure has aroused widespread doubts and anger in the public opinion field. For many community residents, such stories confirm their fears: There is not as direct and equal a connection between huge investment and actual local employment and even improved quality of life as it seems.
In the town of Saline, Michigan, construction of the Stargate data center has now begun, and the roar of machinery drowned out the sound of the veto falling. It remains to be seen whether this massive investment in AI infrastructure can deliver the community benefits promised by the developer, whether it will truly benefit ordinary electricity users, or whether it will once again strengthen people’s impression of the AI industry’s “predatory expansion.”