LOOGOOTEE, Ind. — As artificial intelligence infrastructure expands rapidly across the American heartland, the rush to construct massive, energy-devouring data centers is colliding with aging utility grids, fragile ecosystems, and unprepared local governments.

Heading into today’s Election, across the coun try, and across Indiana, rural counties, regional planning commissions, and leaders find themselves on the front lines of an unprecedented digital industrial buildout. The surge of hyperscale data centers—sprawling commercial campuses housing tens of thousands of high-density server racks powering generative AI and cloud computing—is forcing communities to confront urgent questions about electric grid reliability, air pollution, water resources, and local zoning control.

According to Janet McCabe, a prominent environmental law scholar and former federal environmental official, the resources required to power and cool these facilities present a challenge unlike anything modern utility planners have encountered.

“When you think about waves of development that come through communities, I don’t know that we’ve ever had one that had this kind of impact on our utility system and on the grid,” McCabe said in an extensive interview detailing the environmental and regulatory ramifications of data center expansion.

McCabe, currently a visiting professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law who also works with the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the IU Environmental Resilience Institute, has spent decades navigating environmental statutes and regulatory policy at both state and federal levels. Having previously served in leadership roles within the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s air quality office and as deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, McCabe brings a long-range regulatory lens to an issue that has suddenly surged to the forefront of Indiana civic life.

“The need for energy is so great by the data centers and the development is moving so fast,” McCabe emphasized, that the sheer velocity of the boom risks slowing the state’s transition toward cleaner, more economical energy sources while prolonging fossil fuel emissions.

Strain on the Power Grid

At the epicenter of the data center debate is electric power. Modern computing facilities require staggering volumes of round-the-clock electricity to operate high-performance processors and industrial cooling loops. Unlike traditional manufacturing plants operating on standard shifts, hyperscale facilities draw heavy, uninterrupted baseload power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

This relentless demand arrives during a pivotal transition for the nation’s electric power sector. Across the Midwest, utility providers have spent recent years steadily retiring aging, economically uncompetitive fossil fuel plants in favor of lower-cost renewable resources such as solar, wind, and battery storage.

However, the explosive load growth driven by artificial intelligence is suddenly upending those utility plans.

“We built the modern industrial age on fossil fuel-fired power plants, and those were super important—they were very important in Indiana,” McCabe explained. “And many communities were very much a part of helping the economy move forward in developing those resources. But we’re in a transition to where other kinds of energy are cheaper, first and foremost, but are also much better for people’s health and for the long-term health of the planet.”

That transition is now meeting severe headwinds. To satisfy multi-gigawatt power requests from technology conglomerates, regional utilities are re-evaluating planned retirement schedules and contemplating new fossil fuel generation.

“What we are seeing is that the need for energy is so great by the data centers, and the development is moving so fast, that plants that were planning to close because they’d lived out their useful lives—that the companies had decided they’re too expensive to run anymore, they’re too expensive to fix, that sort of thing, the old fossil plants, the old coal plants—are being kept open longer,” McCabe said. “And more natural gas plants are being talked about being built in order to serve these facilities.”

Delaying coal plant retirements and constructing new gas peakers carries direct environmental consequences. Coal-fired power generation remains a major industrial source of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter, and mercury, creating documented respiratory and cardiovascular risks for surrounding communities.

“There is some amount of renewable energy that people are looking and developers are looking to include,” McCabe noted, “but it’s moving so fast that we’re really seeing this phenomenon as a reason to keep these coal plants open. And so that means more harmful air pollution in people’s communities, and it means more greenhouse gas pollution which is contributing to the changes in our climate and, once emitted, won’t go away for a long time.”

Localized Noise, Air, and Water Concerns

While macro-level grid impacts dominate policy debates in state capitals, the immediate physical footprint of hyperscale facilities creates distinct daily quality-of-life concerns for neighboring rural residents.

Chief among those complaints is chronic acoustic noise. The persistent hum and vibration generated by industrial cooling fans, chiller units, and ventilation equipment can travel across open rural landscapes, disturbing sleep and residential peace.

In addition to continuous cooling systems, data centers rely on massive banks of backup generators to keep servers online if the electrical grid goes down. In most current installations, this secondary safety net consists of dozens, or even hundreds, of industrial diesel-powered engines.

“Noise is a concern, and noise comes from their cooling systems, because they have to keep those machines cool, and it can come from generators that are used to make electricity,” McCabe said. While backup generators are not built to run continuously, routine readiness testing generates noise and air emissions that nearby communities rarely anticipate.

“They’re emergency only, but they do need to be tested on a regular basis to make sure that they’re ready when there’s an emergency,” McCabe pointed out. “So if you have a facility with several hundred of these diesel generators, they could be testing on a pretty frequent basis. So noise is a concern in people’s neighborhoods. Air quality is also a concern from the diesel generators locally, and then air quality generally from the increased power that these facilities need to the extent that it comes from a coal plant or a natural gas plant.”

Diesel exhaust contains fine particulates and toxic air contaminants classified as human carcinogens. For vulnerable rural populations, including elderly residents and children with chronic asthma, frequent testing from large generator fields can aggravate respiratory conditions.

Cooling mechanisms also raise vital questions regarding local water supplies. Depending on system designs, large facilities can consume millions of gallons of water daily through evaporative cooling towers, drawing heavily from municipal utilities or underground aquifers.

“There are concerns about water use,” McCabe stated. “I’ve heard all kinds of different things about how much water these facilities use. Some of them apparently can run on not a whole lot of water, but of course the power plants that provide their power do use a lot of water. So if you’re thinking about these in a holistic way or as a system, there are water impacts. But there are situations in which these facilities could use quite a bit of water from the surface water supply or the groundwater supply.”

In rural farming communities dependent on private wells, sudden high-volume industrial withdrawals can threaten water tables, particularly during drought cycles.

Wetlands Destruction and Extreme Heat

As developers scout rural farmland, campus footprints continue to grow. Modern installations are rarely confined to single buildings; tech firms increasingly assemble mega-campuses spanning vast tracts of agricultural land.

“These can be very large campuses—a thousand acres or more,” McCabe said. “They seem to be getting bigger and bigger the more we hear about them. So there can be wetlands disturbance and disturbance of sensitive areas.”

In Indiana, where state legislative changes have rolled back protections for isolated wetlands, large-scale industrial grading poses heightened ecological hazards. Natural wetlands act as biological sponges that absorb stormwater runoff, filter agricultural chemicals, and recharge groundwater supplies.

“We are concerned about that because wetlands are an incredibly important part of our ecological systems, and one particular concern is that they help us with flooding situations,” McCabe explained. “They absorb stormwater. And one of the things that is true in Indiana is that we’re having a lot more frequent, severe storms, which is leading to localized flooding. So one way to handle that is to have open space, to have wetlands that can absorb that water when it’s flooding and keep it away from populated areas.”

When acreage is cleared and covered with impermeable concrete pads, asphalt parking lots, and utility switchyards, natural drainage is lost, increasing runoff onto neighboring farms and roadways.

Compounding water displacement is the microclimatic impact of excess heat rejection. High-density servers generate tremendous thermal energy, which cooling systems vent directly into the surrounding atmosphere.

“Another concern that I’m hearing about is excess heat,” McCabe said. “These machines are running, running, running, and so it’s going to be hotter around these facilities than further away from them. And since the other big impact that we’re seeing in Indiana from climate change is higher temperatures across the whole state and a lot of extreme hot weather, having it be even hotter—a couple of degrees hotter in your house—can be a significant issue for people’s health. In fact, heat is the top weather-related health hazard that we have in this country, and it sends people to the emergency room, and it can be really, really scary.”

Non-Disclosure Agreements and Civic Distrust

As tech firms seek rural acreage, residents frequently report feeling blindsided by corporate secrecy. Development entities routinely require local commissioners, economic boards, and utilities to sign strict non-disclosure agreements before project details become public.

By the time plans are unveiled at public hearings, options on farmland have often been signed and preliminary tax abatements drafted. McCabe acknowledged that the unfamiliar nature of data center infrastructure contributes to public apprehension.

“It’s kind of an opaque industry,” McCabe said. “It’s different than a distribution center coming into your community, or a factory, or a big-box store. People can understand those. People don’t really understand how much employment there will be long-term for these facilities, and that’s a concern for communities that are looking for good job-creating developments so that people can find jobs in their hometowns. And a lot of that is opaque to people.”

While corporations routinely protect proprietary server designs and trade secrets, blanket secrecy pacts with local public officials often fuel deep neighborhood suspicion.

“I think one of the concerns—and this certainly isn’t the first industry to try to keep their details kind of quiet as they’re going into development—but when they enter into non-disclosure agreements with local governments, it tends to make people even more nervous and suspicious than they might otherwise be, that the details aren’t transparent to people,” McCabe noted.

McCabe emphasized that transparency early in the planning process benefits both the community and the developer.

“Based on what I’ve heard recently, I think many companies are deciding that that probably isn’t a good idea,” she added. “There’s certain information that truly is proprietary, that is trade secrets that by law needs to be kept out of the public eye, but a lot of it doesn’t. And so being forthcoming about it, and then you can have more open conversations about things, and local governments can help with that depending on how they handle these projects that come in.”

Home Rule, Zoning Gaps, and Moratoria

Confronted by rapid developer inquiries, county commissioners and town councils across Indiana are finding their zoning ordinances unprepared. Most rural zoning laws were written decades ago to govern single-family subdivisions and conventional manufacturing, leaving local boards without specific standards for massive server facilities.

In response, local governing bodies are invoking statutory home rule powers to establish formal pauses, giving communities time to study the technology and craft tailored regulations before developers break ground.

“What I’m hearing from the local government community is that a lot of cities and counties and towns, their zoning ordinances just don’t address this type of use specifically,” McCabe said. “And so I think it makes sense for a community who wants to be thoughtful about this and wants to be a little bit more in control of their own process to say: ‘Let’s take a little bit of time, let’s learn about these facilities, and then let’s decide if we need to make some changes to our own zoning requirements so that we can make sure that the things that are important to us as a community are protected in the approval process.'”

Across Indiana, roughly half of all 92 counties have taken regulatory action. Several counties have enacted formal development moratoria, four counties have passed outright bans on commercial data centers, and dozens more have updated zoning codes to establish strict operating standards.

Proactive local ordinances give county commissioners the legal mechanism to protect community interests rather than reacting after projects are announced.

“Maybe that’s design expectations, or setbacks, or requiring a decommissioning plan so that somebody’s thinking ahead to what happens when this facility is no longer there, to how are the water resources of the community going to be protected, how are the citizens and the residents going to be protected from adverse noise—should there be limits on noise?” McCabe explained. “And when you have those kinds of things in an ordinance, that gives you a lot more ability to be specific about the kind of development that you want to see.”

Metropolitan areas are taking similar approaches. Indianapolis established a formal moratorium while undertaking an extensive multi-departmental study to examine infrastructure, environmental, and neighborhood impacts to guide future City-County Council policy. In southwestern Indiana, Evansville launched a comparable fact-finding process.

“Indianapolis has a moratorium in place and they’ve put together a pretty elaborate study process to gather information on a whole bunch of issues—all the ones we’ve talked about and probably a bunch more over the course of the next year or so to inform the city council on what kind of particular requirements they want to put in place, if any,” McCabe noted. “And Evansville is doing a similar thing. So I think that makes all kinds of sense.”

Building Sustainable Digital Infrastructure

Despite substantial environmental and resource challenges, McCabe stressed that advanced computing infrastructure is not fundamentally incompatible with environmental stewardship.

Artificial intelligence models and cloud computing provide vital tools for public welfare, healthcare research, climate resilience, and agricultural productivity. In rural farming areas, advanced computing already supports precision agriculture, helping growers optimize fertilizer usage, conserve irrigation water, and anticipate drought conditions.

“I think we’re all probably using AI a lot more than we think we are—those of us who don’t think we are, right?” McCabe said. “So I’m confident that there are many, many positive applications of AI, and I certainly hope so. I’m hoping that these kinds of high-level computing processes will really be helpful in terms of finding cures for disease and helping us predict weather crises and all the other things that could make life so much better for people.”

To realize those societal benefits without overburdening local resources, McCabe stressed that operators must hold their facilities to rigorous environmental and energy standards.

“There are ways that these facilities can be more sensitive to the environmental impact that they’re having,” McCabe emphasized. “They can maximize the use of renewable energy and minimize the use of and the building of more fossil energy. They can use systems that conserve water and minimize the use of water. They can avoid sensitive ecological areas. They can do the things they need to do to make sure that the noise impacts are acceptable if there are nearby neighbors, or that they’re located in places where there aren’t nearby neighbors that are going to be affected by the noise and excessive heat.”

With newer server architectures and direct liquid-cooling technologies advancing steadily, facilities can dramatically reduce their power and water intensity.

“And they’re getting more and more efficient, the equipment itself, so that all needs to keep going,” she said. “So I think that to the extent that data centers can put themselves forward as environmentally sensitive as they can possibly be, and as energy-sensitive, including paying their own way when it comes to their energy use, then there will be communities that will be happy to have those facilities.”

McCabe added that transparent communication and local planning will ultimately determine where projects succeed: “Hopefully, with more and more information being available to people, and more cities and towns going through the process of learning more and developing regulations, that will lead to those kinds of environmentally sensitive data centers in the right kinds of places where the communities will welcome them.”

What Voters Should Know Before the Polls

With upcoming elections poised to shape local planning boards, county commissions, and the state legislature, the balance between technological expansion and community protection has become an unavoidable issue on the ballot.

For citizens preparing to vote, McCabe urged voters to look closely at local leadership and ask direct questions regarding how candidates plan to govern the influx of energy-intensive industry.

“The most important thing is for people to vote, and for people to find out as much as they can about the candidates that are on their local ballot and how those candidates feel about the issues that they care about,” McCabe said.

Whether voters live in suburban corridors or rural agricultural townships, McCabe underscored that candidate stances on zoning ordinances, utility grid stability, and natural resource protection will directly determine how their communities evolve.

“If you live in a community where there are data center proposals, or there’s a data center, find out what all the candidates are thinking about those facilities,” McCabe urged. “And then weigh that information as you decide how to make your own choice about who to vote for. But ask the questions, and read the information—whether it’s data centers or any other issue that’s important to you as a voter.”

As local officials across Indiana face decisions that will shape land use and utility infrastructure for generations, McCabe’s guidance offers a clear roadmap: informed citizens, proactive local governance, and rigorous environmental accountability remain the foundation for navigating the digital age.