Mercer County is heavily Republican, but at a planning and zoning commission hearing in late July, resident Dallas Waterfield of Burgin found common cause with Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over opposition to data centers.
“Even on the news that AOC, that Cortez woman, she's against it,” he said in the public comment period, to a few laughs in the crowd. "She had dirty water in a glass on the national news."
Waterfield was referring to Ocasio-Cortez in a congressional hearing holding up jars of water from a well near a Meta data center in Georgia. A Vietnam veteran, he says he thinks Ocasio-Cortez is a “communist” and disagrees with her on almost everything — but not this.
“I am willing to go to Georgia and get some of that dirty water and bring it up here and set it on the table,” Waterfield said. “Now, Mr. councilor, I want you to take a drink of that water. Put your mouth where your votes are.”
Waterfield was one of around 200 opponents who showed up at the public hearing in Harrodsburg, not far from where a developer wants to build a massive hyperscale data center — the new facilities that power artificial intelligence services pushed by tech company giants.
Since a developer publicly floated the idea of Mercer County data center in February, residents have sprung into action to organize against the project. Public meetings have been filled with opponents wearing blue shirts reading “no data center” and “We Are Mercer County” — the latter being the name of the main grassroots opposition group that has well more than a thousand members on their Facebook page.
Steve Marshall, a data center opponent from Salvisa, says their coalition has all kinds.
“I'm a conservative. And yeah, this group is made up of you name it: liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, you know, libertarians, and that should say a lot,” Marshall said. “That's rare when you have that, you know, that wide range of political thought in one group.”
Similar scenes have played out all over Kentucky since last year, with increasing frequency. Kentucky passed a new law to give massive state tax breaks to lure the development of data centers, with more than a dozen proposals announced since then.
While some welcome data center projects and their promises of major tax revenue for schools and local governments, it’s more commonly met with outright revolt over fears of water and air pollution, noise or increased electric utility bills.
The only hyperscale AI data center currently approved to proceed with construction is in Louisville, where Mayor Craig Greenberg has been hounded by data center protesters. After a yearlong effort by opponents, Louisville Metro Council passed a six-month moratorium on any additional data centers last week.
Neighboring Oldham County was the first local government in Kentucky to fully block a data center project, as local opponents pushed the county government to pass a first of its kind moratorium last summer.
Opponents in Mercer County this summer pushed to join the more than a dozen rural local governments that have followed suit with their own moratorium.
The major threat these opponents fear is happening in Burgin, where the city council in early July advanced an ordinance to annex more than 1,000 acres of unincorporated Mercer County farmland, which would double its size.
The reason? That’s where Panattoni, a national developer, wants to build a massive hyperscale data center, where it would be unencumbered by any city or county zoning rules.
Residents were not allowed to speak at the meeting, but shouted out their protests and heckles at the council voted 3-to-2 to give the annexation its first reading.
The protests continued at two meetings of the Mercer County Planning and Zoning Commission in late July, where many spoke in passionate opposition and urged them to hold off on passing data center regulations until a full moratorium could be passed for the entire county.
“Please, do not let the greed of a few outweigh the wellbeing of our people. Please stop this now,” said Stacey Sellers of Burgin to the cheers of the crowd at the July 23 public hearing.
Despite packing the meetings with roughly 200 opponents, the commission unanimously voted on July 30 to advance the regulations that would still allow a data center near the county’s power plant and the potentially annexed Burgin farmland.
Commissioner Jonathan Elliott read a prepared statement to explain his yes vote — arguing that increased local tax revenue would help county schools, roads services — which was interrupted by jeers and heckles from the crowd. As the final vote took place, an opponent yelled “sell out!”
Though the Mercer County data center opponents are largely conservative and Republican, they do not see eye to eye on the issue with President Donald Trump, who
won Mercer County with 74% of the vote in 2024. He says local communities would be foolish to pass up data center projects.
“You have communities that really want the data centers and frankly those are the smart communities. because it means tremendous numbers of jobs, very little actual disruption,” Trump said at a July 23 event to promote data centers.
Trump has even suggested that China is playing a role in local opposition to data centers, as a way to beat the United States in the AI race.
“The communities that are giving a hard time now, a lot of people think that's China-oriented,” he said in an August interview with Fox News. “You know that China doesn't want… they're spending a lot of money on promoting don't, you know, build.”
Marshall, the data center opponent from Salvisa, said after the planning commission’s vote that it’s become difficult to trust either party.
“Conservatism is dead, and that's unfortunate. And a corporatocracy has taken over,” Marshall said. “I mean, the Democrats have sold out to the corporatocracy. Now you got the Republicans. ‘Oh, you need hundreds of acres of data centers.’ What?!”
Tuesday morning, data center opponents in Mercer County got a win, as the county government passed a one-year moratorium on data centers in unincorporated areas.
The problem? That would not apply to Burgin, where the council was still taking up the proposal to annex land for the data center.
Tuesday evening after the county moratorium passed, Burgin residents braved a thunderstorm to pack city hall to speak out against annexation for a data center. Usually three or four attend council meetings, but they had to accommodate dozens in the adjoining fire station.
“Make no mistake. They want our land, our water, our electricity, and most importantly, our local government out of the way,” said Beth Corea. “The people say no.”
The council ended up delaying a vote on annexation, with interim Mayor Joe Monroe saying the developer would have to make its case to prove it would work in order to win his support.
Just like the previous public meetings, no residents spoke in favor of the data center — or representatives of the company wanting to build it. While hundreds of anti data center signs line the roads in and around Burgin, Monroe says supporters are rarely heard in public.
“I've never heard a soul. Well, I've had a couple of phone calls reference that they were for it, but other than that, I don't know,” Monroe said.
Panattoni, the company behind the data center and annexation plan, did not agree to an interview request about their project.
Katrina Sexton, one of the Burgin residents who spoke against the annexation, is one the county’s Democratic minority. She is running for state House against a longtime Republican incumbent that she lost to two years ago by nearly 50 percentage points.
She said the data center issue is just one example of how Trump is losing his credibility in even conservative rural areas, citing “a lot of misinformation that he puts out there, like a lot of other politicians, especially at higher levels.”
“I think that he's getting a lot of corporate interest paying into what he's doing, and so he's going to prop them up with the words that he speaks from the White House,” Sexton said. “I think we have to weigh that into the conversation when we're trying to discern the truth for ourselves.”
Mayor Monroe says the data center fight has gotten ugly over the summer, with threats lodged at public officials.
“This fussing and fighting. If this keeps up, we have to take that sign down at the city limits that says this is a friendly little city. Because right now, it ain't no friendly little city,” Monroe said.
This story is part of our series exploring the impacts of data centers in our region. It was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR. Sign up for the weekly Porch Light newsletter here for news from around the region.
