(WXYZ) — A few years ago, massive data centers — the kind fueling artificial intelligence and streaming services — felt like something happening in other parts of the country — like Silicon Valley.
Now, at least four are being proposed in Southeast Michigan.
Watch Mike Duffy's video report below:
They’re billed as the backbone of the AI-powered future we’ve all heard about — but what will bringing them here mean for the communities where they'll be located?
Michael Green is one of seven Augusta Township trustees who gave their approval to rezoning land in Augusta Township for a proposed data center.
“When they started bringing it in, I’m hearing all this about noise, you know, and all this other stuff. And being on the board, I was given the opportunity to go look. And I was like, I’ve lived here more than half my life. So I’m rooted here. And if it was going to bring something into the township that was going to cause problems or make a lot of noise or be nothing that would fit into our area, I would have been 100% not for it," said Green.
Curious, he joined other trustees on a trip to New Albany, Ohio, to see a massive data center cluster in person. That visit, he says, eased his noise concerns — though he knows residents have other worries.
“Electric going out, diesel power contamination in the air, something that’s going to run once, and the sound of the diesel generators," said Green.
Green took me to see the land on which over 800 acres would be purchased for the data center property by New York-based real estate investment firm Thor Equities.
“It’s down in the back corner. It’s already surrounded by solar. There’s a dump there. There’s not a high industry for building houses right next to a dump and solar farms," he said.
“I see no use other for that property than doing something like this to help out.”
In 2024, Michigan lawmakers passed House Bill 4906, which was signed into law this past January. It extends tax breaks for data centers for decades, and adds new incentives for projects built on brownfield sites and former power plants.
As the liaison for the Washtenaw County Road Commission, Green sees the good the data center could do.
“With bridges we have that are going bad, and culverts, and other things, like I said, we’re not a rich township, will help out immensely around here," he said.
The Augusta Township data center is just one of four currently publicly proposed around Metro Detroit, with many others reportedly under negotiation.
Leslie Simpson's home in Willis would end up right between two of them. She thinks she knows why so many are being planned nearby.
"I think they’re seeing rural communities, rural land that’s close to important utility infrastructure and that has made it a prime site for them to target," said Simpson.
She watched as the Augusta Township board of trustees unanimously voted for rezoning the data center, after the planning commission voted against it.
“I’m a general contractor. I plan everything out in advance, cause if you don’t, you’re going to run into a bad time. I feel like there hasn’t been enough planning and communication," she said.
Augusta Township residents gathered enough signatures to force a referendum. In 2026, voters will decide whether the rezoning sticks.
Simpson says she isn’t against having the conversation about bringing a data center to her area.
“But I really want to understand the impacts that it's going to have on the environment, and on utility cost, and infrastructure and air quality," she said.
So why the sudden boom in data centers nationwide? Two words: artificial intelligence.
At the University of Michigan, Associate Professor Mosharaf Chowdhury is working to make AI less power-hungry — because right now, the energy use is enormous.
“AI computation is happening on specialized chips which consume more power," said Chowdhury.
“Each one of them more recent ones can consume up to 1,200 watts, which is almost like a fridge that we have in our houses, a single chip. A server will typically have eight of them. So a single server can consume more than 10 kilowatts.”
A single data center can have thousands of servers, which can mean tens of megawatts, or more.
And it’s not just the chips that require power. They also need to be kept cool to work optimally.
“Cooling actually also consumes 1/4 to 1/3 of the total energy consumption of a data center, just to keep the cooling system running," said Chowdhury.
And that cooling typically requires a lot of water.
Helena Volzer is the Senior Source Water policy manager with Alliance for the Great Lakes. She knows a thing or two about the impact of data centers and their water use, having authored a comprehensive report on the topic.
So how much water can data centers use?
“For the hyperscale facilities that we’re seeing now, the kind that can sustain generative AI and the tools that we’re using now, those facilities can use between one and five million gallons of water per day," said Volzer.
She knows multiple Great Lakes states have passed tax incentives, despite what she says is a lot the public doesn’t know about the sector and the industry.
“We don’t know what the entire water use footprint is of a data center. First of all, when data centers connect to a municipal water supply, which 97% of them are doing, we don’t have any water use reporting requirements, so we can’t get a good handle, once that data center is built, of how much water it’s actually using," she said.
Volzer also says the use of non-disclosure agreements is common practice.
“The challenge with NDAs with data centers is it’s obscuring that water and energy use when it’s a public resource. It’s something the public feels they have a right to know about. And it affects things the public pays for. It can include water infrastructure and electricity bills and all of those kinds of things. If that’s not taken into account, then there’s a lack of understanding there, and the public is understandably weary," said Volzer.
Despite all of this, she says there are places where it would be logical to site a data center.
“It’s about planning, it’s about sustainable growth. It’s about having these transparency and sustainability mechanisms in place so that we can track water use, we can plan for the future. And so I think there’s a way to have both. But it really does require the states to act now and to act proactively and preemptively before it’s too late," she said.
Simpson says as a contractor, she knows how important it is to get it right the first time.
“I think we need to stop putting the cart before the horse and actually figure out what’s right for us and how we can move forward in a sustainable and responsible manner," said Simpson.
