RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Opposition to data-center construction is the bipartisan issue of the moment—70 percent of Americans are against construction in their communities. Recently, New York passed the country’s first statewide data-center-construction moratorium. Maine was supposed to have been the first.
For this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic , I traveled to Maine to understand why one tiny town killed what would have been America’s first data-center moratorium.
The following is a transcript of the episode:
Hanna Rosin: This is Radio Atlantic . I’m Hanna Rosin.
The people-versus-power showdown of the moment revolves around data centers—a tech giant racing to build one near a town versus the people who live there.
I’m sure you’ve seen videos of a town meeting somewhere, in Louisiana or Texas or Iowa—a longtime resident outraged by local leaders who are capitulating to Amazon or Meta or Google. Near me in Northern Virginia is the largest cluster of data centers anywhere.
This week, we have a story from reporter Ethan Brooks, where the battle lines in this war between data centers and small towns are playing out in a really unusual way. Ethan will take it from here.
Ethan Brooks: The first time Katlin Hilton saw the old, run-down farm on Smith Road in Chesterville, Maine, she knew that this was the place.
Katlin Hilton: I drove up by myself one day, and I just—it was the middle of February. It was –5 [degrees], and I just thought it was so beautiful. And I was like, “That’s everything we’ve wanted.”
Brooks: She bought the farm with her husband in 2022, and they went to work. They planted corn, potatoes, and onions; fought rats and weeds; slayed a weasel in the chicken coop with an axe.
[Background farm noise]
Brooks: Four years later, when I visited, there was a new roof on the house, a fire pit, and a flower garden. There was Katlin’s daughter, who had stolen my microphone and was now whispering something into it.
Daughter: I love chickens!
Brooks: There was lots done, and lots left to do. Then, one day this March, Katlin saw a headline. The town next to Katlin’s, a town named Jay, had plans to build a data center.
Hilton: I was really shocked to hear about that. We border Jay. It’s only a mile down the road, is the Jay line. So I just started researching.
Brooks: If you were to search data center in March 2026, you’d find a lot of credible information about dangerous pollutants in the air in Memphis, vanishing groundwater in New Mexico, massive electrical bills in Virginia and Illinois, noise pollution in Texas, and on and on.
And now a data center was coming to Maine, the first in the state, just five miles away from Katlin. She worried about how a data center might affect the environment, and what it might do to her farm.
Hilton: So I reached out to Melanie and sent her an email, and she literally called me in 20 minutes.
Brooks: Melanie Sachs is a member of the Maine House of Representatives. Sachs told Katlin there was a bill she’d proposed that could stop the data-center project.
[ Music ]
Brooks: It was a statewide moratorium, coming up for a vote in just a couple of weeks. The moratorium would put a stop to large-data-center-construction in the state of Maine until 2027. The bill was called L.D. 307, and it would kill the project in Jay.
So Katlin got to work. In the afternoons, while her daughter napped, she wrote letters and emails. One letter she sent to 165 people in the legislature, manually copying and pasting each email address. She signed her emails, “Make today wonderful,” and then she waited.
Bernie Sanders: A moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers is not such a radical idea.
Brooks: Katlin wasn’t the only one campaigning against data centers. Across the country, a weird coalition had formed. One that included both Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon—
Steve Bannon: All they’re trying to do is to ram it down your throat.
Brooks: — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Saying no to these data centers being built.
Brooks: —and Matt Walsh.
Matt Walsh: And really the ultimate message to these people is, “Well, you’re screwed. You’re on your own. Too bad. The data centers are more important.”
Brooks: 16 days later, the Maine moratorium passed, with Democrats and Republicans supporting the bill.
Hilton: So I was super excited, and a lot of my friends were like, “Yeah, good job.” And they’re like, “You never know. You could’ve been a big reason why they voted for that.”
Brooks: For Katlin, this was an amazing outcome, and not just for her state.
Hilton: I was seeing all these different posts on social media praising Maine saying, “Good job, Maine. You’re the only state in the country that has put a moratorium forth to not allow data centers for now.” And so people were celebrating.
Brooks: Similar ideas had been proposed in a handful of other states, but none had passed a state legislature. Maine was the first place—anywhere—to ban new-data-center construction.
Ten days later, Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, posted a letter to her office’s website. She said: “I am hereby vetoing L.D. 307.” Mills had killed the moratorium.
Melanie Sachs: We had thousands of people—and I know this—thousands of people contact her office, saying, “Please let the bill go through.”
Brooks: This is Melanie Sachs, the state representative who proposed the moratorium.
Sachs: Let’s have protections for 1.4 million Mainers. Don’t give that up just for this one project.
[ Music ]
Sachs: I’m still astonished. I may be naive, Ethan, but I’m still astonished that this happened.
Brooks: The reason for the governor’s veto wasn’t because she’s an AI evangelist—she isn’t—or that she had a problem with such a sweeping measure. In her letter, she wrote, “A moratorium is appropriate.”
She vetoed it because one town, Jay, the town next to Katlin’s farm, wanted and maybe needed this data-center project. In particular, she had received letters from the town’s leade...
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