What other communities decided — and what they got

In short: the loudest national concern isn’t noise or health — it’s utility bills, which is why our Power & Rates pagegoes deepest. And opinion polls measure sentiment, not facts; both deserve weight in a public decision, but they’re different things.

A 2025 tracking report counted at least 16 projects worth ~$64 billion blocked or delayed by local opposition — opposition that polls as bipartisan.⁹¹ Examples with documented outcomes:

• Chesterton, Indiana — a $1.3B project withdrawn after organized resident opposition over air, water, wetlands, and home values.⁹²
• Peculiar, Missouri— the “Don’t Dump Data in Peculiar” campaign led the planning commission to remove data centers from its zoning entirely, killing a $1.5B project.⁹³
• Tucson, Arizona— the council unanimously rejected “Project Blue,” primarily over water in a drought region; the project later re-emerged outside city limits — a reminder that one body’s rejection doesn’t always end a project.⁹⁷
• Here in Kentucky — several counties and cities hit pause on data center proposals in 2025–26, and the issue featured prominently in 2026 local primaries; the Maysville-area hyperscale proposal drew multi-day hearings and a lawsuit, with NDAs limiting public information.⁹⁶²²

• Loudoun County, Virginia — collected roughly $895 million in data center tax revenue in FY2025, projected at ~$1.3 billion (about 45% of all county tax revenue) by FY2027; the county credits that revenue with funding schools and services at lower residential tax rates.⁹⁰ The same county has a real, documented record of noise and visual complaints and is now tightening its zoning — both things are true.¹⁴
• New Albany, Ohio — 40 data centers since 2010 built an enormous business park. But note the structure: the town granted 15-year, 100% property tax abatements, and Ohio data centers have claimed ~$2.5 billion in state and local tax breaks since 2017 — so the fiscal payoff depends entirely on what the locality negotiated.⁹⁴⁹⁵
• The contrast that matters:Loudoun taxes data center equipment fully and reaps enormous revenue; New Albany abated heavily and gets less per facility. Pikeville’s stated position — no reduction of local taxes as an incentive²— puts it on the Loudoun side of that line, and Kentucky’s state sales-tax incentive operates at the state level without touching local revenue.²⁵

We don’t have to look out of state for precedents — the region has run this experiment once already, with crypto mining in the early 2020s. The record is instructive in both directions:

• Belfry (Pike County) — quiet, modest, real. Blockware’s mine opened in 2022, grew from 20 to roughly 30 MW, and delivered approximately the ~10 jobs it promised — with no community conflict on record in four years. But the touted expansion to 75–100 MW and a promised third Kentucky site never happened, and there’s been almost no public reporting since 2022.¹²⁷¹²⁹
• Hatfield (Pike County) — discounts with conditions. When Blockware’s subsidiary sought a special Kentucky Power contract with $2.5M+ in electricity discounts for a second facility, the PSC approved it only with protections: the company covers incremental capacity costs dollar-for-dollar and posts $2.5M+ in security bonds — an early local example of the ring-fencing now standard for data centers.¹²⁸
• Jenkins (Letcher County) — the cautionary tale. A warehouse was converted for a Hong Kong-based crypto company; the machines were never switched on, the deal collapsed into litigation, and the promised retraining jobs never came.¹³¹
• Louisa (Lawrence County) — the regulator said no. The PSC rejected Kentucky Power’s 250 MW crypto contract at the former Big Sandy plant site, citing capacity shortfalls and ratepayer risk — proof that the PSC will block deals it finds unsafe for customers.¹³²

The head of the region’s economic development agency summed up the crypto wave: “I don’t think any of them have really materialized at the level that anyone hoped they would.”¹³¹The honest lesson isn’t that projects fail or succeed — it’s that announcements aren’t outcomes, and the deals that protected the public were the ones with enforceable conditions attached up front.

• The worst outcomes were siting failures. Granbury (crypto mine 100 yards from homes), Newton County (construction next to residential wells), Memphis (turbines near an already-burdened neighborhood). Distance, design rules, and permits set before approval are what separated quiet neighbors from national news.³⁵⁸⁵⁸²
• Secrecy bred distrust everywhere. The Dalles fought a newspaper for a year over water numbers;¹⁰⁵Maysville’s NDA-shrouded proposal drew lawsuits.²²Pikeville’s city government, by contrast, published its MOU in full and states it signed no NDA — a meaningful difference residents can verify themselves.¹
• Enforceability decided the economics. Towns that negotiated full taxation, minimum payments, and commitments tied to the land did best; towns that traded abatements for projections did worst.⁹⁴⁹⁰