When Oregon resident Isabelle Reksopuro heard Google was gobbling up public land to fuel its data centers in her home state, she didn't initially know what to believe. "There's a lot of misinformation about data centers," she said. "Google has denied taking that land."

Technically, she explains, The Dalles, a city near the Washington state border, sought to reclaim that land, "and Google is just a big, unnamed power user." The city had in fact asked for ownership of a 150-acre portion of Mount Hood National Forest, claiming it needs access to Mount Hood's watershed to meet municipal needs as its population — 16,010 as of the 2020 census — grows. But critics, including environmentalists, say the city is trying to secure more water for Google, which has a sprawling data center campus in The Dalles that already consumes about one-third of the city's water supply.

This controversy made Reksopuro curious about the backlash to data centers being built in other communities. So Reksopuro, a student at the University of Washington who studies the connections between tech and public policy, decided to map it out. Using information collected by Epoch AI and data scraped from legislation on data centers, she built an interactive map tracking AI policy around the world. She designed it to be simple enough for anyone to use. "I wanted it to be something that my younger sisters could play through and explore to understand what are the data centers in the area and what's actually being done about it," Reksopuro said. She hoped to shift their opinions that way, "instead of like, through TikTok."

Using Claude, the map searches for new sources four times a day and checks them against the existing database Reksopuro built out. "Once it does that, it will write a new summary, add it to the news feed, and populate it on the sidebar," she said. "I wanted it to be self-updating, since I'm also a student."

Opposition to data centers is one of the few things that unites Americans across party lines. After the initial construction phase, data centers bring few permanent jobs, and send "power costs to records in much of the US," reports Bloomberg. Though data centers are increasingly controversial, Reksopuro's map shows that the public response to them is nowhere near universal, nor are the policies governing their construction and use. While there's been a huge backlash to data centers in Maine — which in April passed the first state-level moratorium on hyperscale data centers, though it was later vetoed by Gov. Janet Mills — Texas "is a huge fan of data centers," Reksopuro said. "Texas actually passed a tax exemption for data centers." The state gives data centers more than $1 billion in tax breaks each year, The Texas Tribune reports.

Reksopuro isn't against data centers, but she thinks tech giants benefit from a lack of transparency around data center policies. "Right now, it's this really opaque thing — and all of a sudden, there's a facility," she said. "I think that if people knew about data centers beforehand, it would give them leverage. They would be able to negotiate: ask for job training programs, tax revenue, environmental monitoring, things to improve their community."

The map highlights a growing divide in how different regions approach data center development. In states like Virginia, which hosts the world's largest concentration of data centers in Loudoun County, local governments have embraced the industry with tax incentives and streamlined permitting. But even there, residents have begun pushing back against noise, water usage, and the strain on the electrical grid. Northern Virginia data centers already consume more than 1.5 gigawatts of power, and that figure is expected to triple in the coming decade as AI workloads explode.

AI data centers are particularly power-intensive. Training a single large language model can use as much electricity as hundreds of homes in a year. And the cooling systems required to keep server racks from overheating often rely on vast quantities of water. In drought-prone regions like the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest, this has sparked fierce debates over whether tech companies should be allowed to draw from municipal supplies during water shortages. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have all faced protests over their water usage in places like Oregon, Arizona, and Chile.

Reksopuro's map also tracks policy responses at the state and national level. It shows that while some states are passing moratoriums or environmental impact studies, others are actively courting data centers with tax holidays and expedited permits. For example, Ohio recently attracted a $1.9 billion data center campus from Amazon Web Services by offering a 75% property tax abatement for 15 years. Meanwhile, New York has considered legislation to require data centers to disclose their energy and water consumption publicly.

Internationally, the map reveals a patchwork of regulations. Ireland, which hosts many of Europe's data centers due to its cool climate and corporate tax rates, has begun limiting new connections to the grid because data centers now consume over 20% of the country's electricity. Singapore lifted a moratorium on new data centers in 2022 but imposed strict efficiency standards. In Chile, a data center project in the Atacama Desert—one of the driest places on Earth—sparked outrage over water use and led to a court ruling halting construction.

The map's self-updating feature, powered by AI, ensures that new developments are added quickly. This is crucial given the rapid pace of data center announcements. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, global data center capacity increased by over 8 gigawatts—equivalent to adding several nuclear power plants. Much of this growth is driven by the AI boom, with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google racing to build massive computing clusters.

For residents who want to understand what's happening in their own backyard, the map provides a starting point. By clicking on a location, users can see proposed projects, existing facilities, and related legislation. They can also read news summaries about local controversies. Reksopuro hopes the tool will democratize information that is often locked in zoning meetings or corporate press releases.

"A lot of people don't know that their city council is considering a tax break for a data center until after it's approved," she said. "This map gives them a chance to get involved early." She points to the case of The Dalles, where the water controversy only came to light after activists dug into public records. "If there had been a map like this years ago, maybe residents could have pushed for conditions on the water use."

The debate over data centers is likely to intensify as AI adoption grows. Already, tech companies are warning that electricity shortages could limit AI's expansion. At the same time, environmental groups argue that building more data centers without oversight will worsen climate change and strain local resources. Reksopuro's map offers a way to cut through the noise and see the facts on the ground.

For now, she is focused on keeping the map updated and expanding its coverage to include more regions. She is also working on adding features that allow users to submit their own data, such as local news articles or zoning proposals. "This isn't just my project anymore," she said. "It's a tool for anyone who wants to understand how tech is reshaping their community—and what they can do about it."

Source: The Verge News