Residents urge moratorium on AI/data centers, cite transparency, environmental and cost concerns

Dozens of residents used the public-comment period at the Jan. 21 Kenosha Common Council meeting to press elected officials to halt or slow development of proposed AI and data center projects in the region.

Nicholas Pro Rock, who said he is running for alderman in District 9, urged the council to attend a Feb. 10 public hearing and to challenge proposed electricity discounts in a tariff that would benefit data centers. "It's called a tariff, but essentially in the tariff, it's discounts for the data centers," he told the council, and urged residents to "go speak out against it." He also pointed to a data center in Pleasant Prairie as an example of harms he said the city should study.

Sage Holloway told the council she could not find independent examples showing data centers reliably improve host communities and said transparency from project proponents has been "abysmal." "If we are confident in this development... I hope you have more information than I do because what I have is just very persuasive against this data center," Holloway said, urging the city to publish clear, accessible information and consider a moratorium.

Jamie Burns, a District 13 resident, spoke bluntly about economic and environmental risks: "We can't eat data. We can't drink data. We can't breathe data. We can't house ourselves with it," Burns said, calling for a pause on AI data construction and criticizing claims about job growth and energy investments.

Gerald Ayer asked the council to impose an 18-month moratorium, saying it would provide time to assess full impacts and to require minimum project standards. Ayer outlined conditions he said should be mandatory for any proposed data center: multi-story rather than sprawling single-story buildings, on-site water recycling, on-site renewable energy with storage, and utility agreements that ensure the developer or utility pays upfront infrastructure costs rather than passing them to residents. "If they get built, they should be covering their own costs and be using renewable energy with on-site storage," Ayer said.

Speakers raised additional concerns including local air emissions tied to new gas-fired plants to supply power, potential long-term contamination from some facility processes, and doubts about projected local job benefits. Multiple commenters cited actions elsewhere — including a 12-month moratorium in Madison — as precedent for a pause on construction.

No council action was taken on the data-center proposals at the Jan. 21 meeting; the remarks were recorded during the public-comment period. Several speakers asked the council for publicly accessible information about project terms, utility agreements and environmental mitigations before any approvals move forward. The meeting's public records show extensive interest from residents on this single issue and a call for clearer information and possible regulatory changes going forward.