Residents urge Kenosha council to slow Microsoft data center consideration over water, air and grid concerns

Multiple residents used the public-comment period at the Kenosha Common Council’s June 1 meeting to press elected officials to slow or halt consideration of a proposed Microsoft data center and to demand public transparency and environmental protections.

“Data centers are significantly burdensome uses of land,” said Leanne Carpenter, who gave her address for the record and warned of widespread water impacts, chemical contamination in returned water and 24/7 noise and light pollution. Carpenter said communities “all across the country” have reported degraded water and effects on local waterways since data centers began operating.

Carrie Lynn Brewer, who said she represented neighbors opposed to the project, urged the council to avoid “secret meetings” and non-disclosure agreements and to engage the public with data from prospective partners. Brewer invoked local examples from other jurisdictions and warned that residents there had successfully recalled or voted out local officials who approved data centers without public input. “Please do not make a deal with the devil in darkness,” Brewer said.

Several speakers raised connections between data centers and new power projects. Rachel Kirschner cited a recently proposed 1,186-megawatt fossil-fuel plant and argued that large-scale data centers drive demand for such generation, posing air-quality and health concerns for Kenosha and neighboring communities. Kirschner named Microsoft explicitly as linked to the proposed Kenosha site.

Nearby property owners also described learning only after the fact that land near their homes had been sold for the facility. Dan Laska said that property near his lot had been sold to Microsoft and said neighbors woke up to finding the company as a new immediate neighbor, urging more transparency and slower review.

Speakers asked the council to disclose any non-disclosure agreements, explain who would pay for utility upgrades, provide independent noise and water-use studies, and consider a moratorium on large data-center developments like those adopted in nearby counties. Linnea Allrod, a retired resident on a fixed income, said she feared rising utility costs and asked whether the facility’s operating costs would be carried by Microsoft or passed on to ratepayers.

The meeting record shows no council vote on the data-center proposal itself on June 1. Public comments concluded and the council proceeded to licensing, zoning and finance items on the agenda.

Why this matters: Hyperscale data centers use large, constant amounts of power and can require on-site cooling and backup generation. Residents at the meeting raised environmental, economic and transparency questions that, if unaddressed, could influence later formal approvals or prompt calls for local moratoria.

Next steps: Council business continued after public comment; the transcript does not record a decision on the data-center proposal at this meeting.