When I get asked why I’m anti-AI, I’ve taken to leading off with, “Because it’s an environmental disaster.” For one, it throws people off guard who were spoiling for an ideological fight over the existential question of whether we’re blithely ceding ownership of the very thing that makes us human: creativity. (Answer: yes, we are.) But perhaps more importantly, it feels like an under-discussed component of the AI boom. Part of that is evident in the way AI companies have stealthily and surreptitiously been setting up massive data centers across the country, before most of us even knew what an AI data center was (hi, it’s me, I’m “most of us”). The data centers are what enable AI to operate as the great constantly needs to be fact-checked time-saving tool that it is. And these centers require A LOT of electricity and water to run. They’re a huge drain on resources and have multiplied with next to no regulations. Except some states are starting to say, “Not so fast!” The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) says that 14 states are considering bans — or at least moratoriums — on data centers. From Newsweek:

The ongoing efforts to limit the proliferation of data centers include proposals to block their construction throughout Georgia through 2028 and a moratorium on larger facilities in Maine until late 2027, which was recently vetoed, according to NCSL data. Other similar attempts have failed thus far in Oklahoma, Minnesota and New Hampshire, among other states.

Measures have also been introduced in South Carolina seeking to forbid local approval of data centers until legislators adopt a comprehensive oversight framework in the state, while lawmakers in Pennsylvania want a three-year moratorium on new data centers to be accompanied by impact studies, according to NCSL, which tracks the efforts.

More than 3,000 data centers are already operating throughout the United States, with more than 1,500 new facilities in various stages of construction, according to the Pew Research Center.

The majority of the planned data centers are located in rural areas, particularly through the South and Midwest, while 87 percent of existing facilities are housed in urban settings, according to the Washington-based think tank.

As of April, Virginia and Texas had the most operating data centers in the U.S., followed by California, Ohio and New York, Pew researchers found.

Several proposed or under-construction facilities are located directly above or adjacent to the Ogallala Aquifer, a groundwater system that underpins much of America’s agricultural production. Construction at a proposed 438-acre site in Texas near Odessa is expected to begin next year, while Microsoft announced plans in April to buy roughly 3,200 additional acres in Wyoming to expand data centers there.

Other major proposed data centers near the aquifer include facilities in Natrona County, Wyoming and in San Angelo, Texas.

The Ogallala Aquifer, which spans beneath eight states, remains one of the most important groundwater resources in North America. Water losses in some subregions have been sustained for decades, with depletion rates “reaching over 100,000 acre-feet per year and nearly 27 percent of stored water already gone in some places,” researchers previously said.

“Unlike surface reservoirs, the aquifer recharges extremely slowly,” Colorado State University electrical and computer engineering professor Sudeep Pasricha told Newsweek on Sunday, adding that recharge rates in parts of the Great Plains often total less than an inch per year, far less than the amount taken for irrigation.

That lost water could take “centuries to millenia in some areas” to return, Pasricha said.

[From Newsweek]

Ugh, this is the last thing the Ogallala Aquifer needs! I propose legislators draft a law that says if humans have depleted a natural resource to the brink of extinction through one bit of technology — in Ogallala’s case, the center-pivot-irrigator — then we lose the right to destroy the resource with a second bit of tech. That’s only fair, yes? And at least with the center-pivot-irrigator, it was originally deployed to help out farmers. What, pray tell, is the noble cause of AI? So you don’t have to write a job-related thank you note yourself? So you can direct a movie without actors or crew getting in the way? Puh-lease. It’s been the Wild West with the proliferation of these AI data centers, time for the sheriff to come to town. And somewhere in that metaphor is environmental legal activist Erin Brockovich, who just last month launched an interactive map for us citizens to report on any and all centers rumored, being built, or already up and running… the wells dry.

The 14 states proposing bans are: Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Lawmakers in at least 14 states are considering bans or temporary moratoriums on the construction of new AI data centers. Growing worries about the facilities effects on electricity demand water resources and local infrastructure have prompted these legislative efforts.… pic.twitter.com/ejrYOyeIEN

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) July 3, 2026

Photos credit: Image Press Agency/Image Press Agency/Avalon, IMAGO/Jens Schicke/Avalon