In Walterboro, South Carolina—also known as the “front porch” of the state’s famed lowcountry—the biggest event in town is usually the annual Rice Festival, simmering up tasty bowls of chicken and rice and various confections to hundreds of people a day.
Last December, though, another event got the town cooking, but this time it wasn’t rice, and it wasn’t festive, either—it was a county council meeting to consider a massive 859-acre data center in the rural town, and Walterboro residents were boiling mad about it.
Speaking to the local ABC affiliate, Danielle Coming, a Walterboro native, expressed a sentiment held by all but a handful of the nearly 400 people: “Everything I’ve researched about data centers, the power demand, and the power supply usage is very high. And we don’t have the infrastructure right now. So we’re in a rural community. We’re not in an industrial complex.”
Republican State Sen. George Campsen, who represents the area, raised parallel concerns that he said his constituents were talking about: “It’s a big threat to the water source. It’s also really a threat to their quality of life. Power bills are going to be going up dramatically because of these data centers, not just here, but all over the state.”
The public outcry worked, for now. The county council—which had tried to broker a deal with the company in secret—backed down and is pursuing a six-month moratorium on the facilities. That’s not much, but it’s something: It buys time for citizens to take the next steps in mobilizing to protect their communities from unregulated data center growth, in particular to develop an ordinance and to allow a lawsuit filed against the zoning board by two residents to work its way through the courts.
Walterboro is not alone. In multiple towns and small cities in South Carolina, the experience is being repeated. Just this past week, in Marion County, South Carolina, Stream Data Centers abandoned its plans for a 400-acre complex, ostensibly because of “utility timing constraints.” Translated, that means fierce local opposition constraints. The outcry has been as loud and as active as in Walterboro.
If South Carolina is not ground zero in the data center debate—local fights are occurring across the country, from Wyoming to Maine to Kentucky and beyond—it is certainly a hotspot in the fight. People are fearing for their water supplies and their pocketbooks, as other upward economic pressures push utility rates ever higher.
While specific costs in particular towns are hard to pin down, a raft of regional studies points to higher utility rates. Who pays the data centers’ energy costs is not an unimportant question, given that by 2028, data centers could use between 7 and 12 percent of the electricity consumed in the U.S., according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
A Bloomberg News analysis last September found that areas with high concentrations of data centers saw wholesale electricity prices jump 267 percent over the past five years. That is a correlational statistic, but even though it may not prove causation, it does provide at least probable cause for a likely culprit, even if the retail price climb was not that high. Indeed, both surveys by Bloomberg and Consumer Reports documented residential utility rates rising in some Virginia locations by between 80 percent and 180 percent.
A State of the Market Report for PJM (the regional grid serving 13 U.S. states and D.C.) for 2026 found that price impacts on consumers have been large and are not reversible: “The price impacts will be even larger in the near term unless the issues associated with data center load are addressed in a timely manner, prior to the next [energy PJM auction], scheduled for June 2026,” the report stated.
Wholesale electricity prices on the PJM grid rose nearly 76 percent year over year in the first quarter, with rapidly growing data center demand identified as a key driver, the report found.
In sum, data center energy demand is reshaping the economy across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, and evidence from PJM and Virginia suggests that, without protection, existing ratepayers may end up subsidizing infrastructure built primarily for the large industrial users.
Meanwhile, in all but a handful of places, laws and lawmakers are lagging behind the popular movement on the streets and at the community level. Back in South Carolina, lawmakers have attempted to respond with the Data Center Development Act, sponsored by the libertarian-ish Sen. Tom Davis (R-Beaufort). His proposal would require data centers to bear the costs of the new generation and transmission infrastructure they need while establishing a tiered permitting system, environmental standards, decommissioning requirements, and incentives to redevelop Brownfield sites rather than undeveloped land.
Here’s how Davis put it in a column he wrote for South Carolina’s FITS News:
“But unchecked development under our state’s current lax rules is equally problematic. Data centers can consume 50-100 megawatts or more, equivalent to a small city’s electrical demand. Without proper regulation, utilities can shift the massive costs of new power plants and transmission lines onto existing customers. These facilities also consume enormous amounts of water for cooling, generate noise, and create light pollution and vibrations affecting nearby communities.”
Davis’s bill would require that data centers pay their full infrastructure costs, and, through upfront contributions, minimum contract obligations, or hybrid arrangements approved by the Public Service Commission, pay the freight of new generation and transmission capacity.
“The Department of Environmental Services reports South Carolina has more than 400 open Brownfield sites, contaminated or underutilized industrial properties that sit idle, generating no tax revenue, providing no jobs, and posing ongoing environmental risks,” he wrote. “Allowing these sites to remain dormant is economically wasteful and environmentally irresponsible.”
Davis’s bill would also require financial assurances for complete site remediation and mandate water efficiency standards, noise limits, vibration controls, and buffer requirements to protect sensitive areas and residential communities.
Still, to the concern of many residents, legislative action of any type appears uncertain. Davis’s bill faces procedural hurdles and may not pass, though some transparency measures—such as restrictions on incentives and mandatory water-use reporting—may survive through the state budget process. Those issues could be settled this week.
Still, the budget provisions often offer little protection and no solace to residents who are taking on data centers at the grassroots level. That’s a growing population that remains substantial, as more data centers come to a community near them.
Indeed, just one in three Americans approve of the fast pace of data-center construction that supports artificial intelligence, and most would oppose building one in their own community, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. The poll showed just 33 percent of Americans agreed that it was a good thing to build data centers at a rapid pace, while 64 percent disagreed. Only 14 percent of Americans would support a data center in their community.
There are 954 data centers now operating in the United States and another 1,245 planned projects, according to the latest data from Cleanview, a research firm tracking data centers.
