Trump Pushes A.I. Data Centers, but the G.O.P. Is Cool to One in Alabama
Kenneth E. Gulley, the mayor of Bessemer, Ala., confesses to some befuddlement as to why the people in his community would oppose the construction of a $14.5 billion artificial intelligence data center in a woodland just outside of town. “A data center is probably the most unintrusive thing,” Mr. Gulley said in his office one morning earlier this month. “You know, it’s like a big computer sitting in your backyard.”
Several residents whose backyards may soon adjoin a digital facility the size of 18 Walmarts freely acknowledge their displeasure. “This is as pristine a forest that you’ll find in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains,” said Ron Morgan, a diesel machinist and retired military veteran, who drove a reporter through the dense timberland behind his house in an all-terrain vehicle. “And if they have their way, all this will be gone.”
Mr. Morgan’s sentiments are echoed by his neighbor Marshall Killingsworth, who bought his own land 58 years ago and now fears that the hoot owls in his backyard will no longer serenade him at night. Also fretful is Ronnie Buchanan, a retired rubber plant manager whose family has lived adjacent to the proposed site since 1979. “If that data center takes in all the water everyone says it will, it’s going to flood my land,” Mr. Buchanan said. “I’ll have to move.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/us/politics/trump-ai.html