Ask your elected officials to data center-proof your world!

Watch this great video here (https://fb.watch/HH24_BiGkO)

Monterey Park has just banned data centers from their city! Let’s get in front of this issue before it lands on our own doorsteps.

(dailyupdate) A small city outside Los Angeles just did something no other place in America has ever done — and it wasn’t close.

Voters in Monterey Park, California approved Measure NDC in a June 2026 special election, making it the first US city to enact a permanent ban on data centers through a ballot measure. The margin: roughly 86% in favor. That’s not a squeaker. That’s a community speaking with one voice.

The reason behind the vote is simple, and it’s one a lot of families across the country will recognize. Data centers are enormous, around-the-clock power and water guzzlers. They strain local electricity grids, drive up utility rates for everyone nearby, draw heavily on drinking water for cooling, and can foul the air with backup generators. Residents of Monterey Park — a city of about 60,000 — decided they didn’t want their air quality, their water supply, or their monthly bills sacrificed so a tech company could park a server farm in their backyard.

What makes this remarkable is that they didn’t wait for a city council fight or a zoning board to maybe-someday act. They put it directly on the ballot and made the ban permanent. No expiration date. No quiet reversal after the news cameras leave.

It lands at a moment when data centers are exploding across the country to feed the AI boom, and towns everywhere are waking up to what that actually costs them — higher power bills, drained reservoirs, and dirtier air, often with few local jobs to show for it. Monterey Park just handed those communities a blueprint.

The question now: how many cities follow? Check out this list here!

ACTIONS! Call your elected representative on all levels and ask them to halt all AI Data centers until necessary regulations are put into place to protect our people, our communities and our environment!

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FEDERAL: Ask our senators to support S.4214 – Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act.

Watch this video here.

Neither Senators Padilla nor Schiff have signed on as cosponsors yet, even though the legislation was introduced in March.

Either use this form from Food and Water Watch (https://act.foodandwaterwatch.org/page/92233/action/1), use our script or one of your own.

Minimum script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I am wondering why [Sen. _____] has not signed on to cosponsor Sen. Sanders’s S.4214 – Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act yet.

More script if you want it: He introduced it in March, and we are learning more about the dangers of these centers every day from the lived experiences of fellow Americans. What is the Senator doing to protect us, our communities, our environment and our privacy from these companies?

CONTACTS:

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STATE: Tell your legislators that we’re taking the lead locally if they can’t effectively regulate these monsters.

Tracking state-level data center legislation across the United States

Minimum script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I am want [Assemblymember/Senator ____] to know that we are now working on creating AI data center bans locally. We’ve looked over the current state legislation – there seems to be a lot of monitoring requirements for centers once they’re built, but there are few requiring strict standards and effective penalties for non-compliance for new centers. We’re looking for 100% clean energy standards, strict water use limits, noise control, setbacks from sensitive uses, restrictions against the use of ag lands and greenfields, absolute transparency in contract negotiations and regulations governing cleanup and removal in case of abandonment. It was only recently that CA finally passed laws requiring fossil fuel corporations to cap their abandoned wells and to create buffer zones from their facilities to protect schools and homes. We’re still waiting for a “polluter pays” law to hold fossil fuel companies liable for the harms they’ve done to our environment. Why would we allow a whole new type of polluting industry into our communities with so few guardrails? We also know that the profits from these centers would largely flow to multinational corporations and investors, certainly not to us, though we’d suffer the consequences of their operation.

So please tell your committees to get to work on creating meaningful laws that protect your constituents, our communities and the environment, because we are now going to make it very hard for these data centers to exist.

CONTACTS:

This is where CA is now:

  • Emissions & Climate Risk: 
    • (SB 253) – Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act PASSED in 2023 requires large corporations doing business in California (including data center operators) to publicly disclose their Scopes 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. It does not limit emissions, it just penalizes them strictly for failing to accurately measure and report those emissions. 
  • Energy Costs & Siting: 
    • AB 222 – Data centers: power usage effectiveness: cost shifts. In suspension (FAILED). Would have required data centers to publicize their power use
    • AB 1577 – Data centers: reporting. Now in State Senate.
      • it “would require data centers with an installed electrical capacity of 500 kilowatts or more to submit monthly operational data to the California Energy Commission, including power usage effectiveness, waste heat data, and onsite energy generation. The bill would require that the same operational data be submitted to local agencies when applying for discretionary permits or land-use approvals.
      • In addition, while presently removed from the express monthly reporting requirements in recent bill amendments, data centers would need to report on total annual water consumption and annual potable water consumption when applying for discretionary permits. Notably, the bill expressly authorizes use of information submitted for discretionary permits for various purposes, including, but not limited to, “environmental review,” such as under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).“
    • SB 58 – Air quality: standard: hydrogen sulfide. (FAILED) This would have provided incentives for them to use more clean energy.
    • SB 57 – This bill originally aimed to protect energy customers from shouldering infrastructure costs driven by data centers now merely lets regulators figure out if that is happening. (PASSED)
    • SB 886 – California Technology Innovation and Ratepayer Protection Act – June 10 hearing postponed by committee. More information from the author here.
    • SB 887 – environmental leadership development projects: data centers: clean energy powerplant projects. Now in the Assembly. 1) confirms that CEQA categorical exemptions do not apply to data center projects and 2) creates an expedited judicial review pathway for projects meeting clean energy and water efficiency standards under California’s Environmental Leadership Development Project program.
  • Water usage
    • AB-93 – Water resources: data centers – failed. This legislation mandated disclosure of water use by data center operators, although now in a way that may elude public access. In his veto message, Newsom said he was reluctant to impose requirements on data centers, “without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.” Cal Matter published this article “Data centers are guzzling California’s water. We have no idea how much.”
    • AB 2469 – Data centers: water use disclosures – now in the State Senate. “Prohibits a city, including a charter city, county, or city and county (city or county) from approving construction of a new, or expansion of an existing, data center unless an applicant for a data center project provides the local agency with detailed information regarding the data center’s water use and meets other requirements related to workforce and infrastructure for the data center.” It includes a “water scarcity plan” as a report that includes measures to be implemented under different drought scenarios defined by the U.S. Drought Monitor to reduce water use.
    • AB 2619 – Water resources: data centers – now in the State Senate. It would require a person who owns or operates a data center, prior to applying to a city or a county for an initial business license, equivalent instrument, or permit, to provide its water supplier, under penalty of perjury, an estimate of the expected water use, the anticipated source of water, and the data centers projected water use volume for the maximum day, maximum month, and average year.
  • AI Safety standards:
    • Gov. Newsom signed SB 53, an AI safety law, which has nothing to do with people living near data centers, which is being copied by other states – it “increases information that AI makers must share with the public, including in a transparency report that must include the intended uses of a model, restrictions or conditions of using a model, how a company assesses and addresses catastrophic risk, and whether those efforts were reviewed by an independent third party.“
    • However, these is the important part for those who have to live next to them. “The new law falls short no matter how well it is enforced, critics say. It does not include in its definition of catastrophic risk issues like the impact of AI systems on the environment, their ability to spread disinformation, or their potential to perpetuate historical systems of oppression like sexism or racism. The law also does not apply to AI systems used by governments to profile people or assign them scores that can lead to a denial of government services or fraud accusations, and only targets companies that make $500 million in annual revenue.”

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LOCAL: ‘Tis the season to tie your City Councilmembers and County Supervisors to a ban on data centers.

ACTION: Email your city councilmember/supervisor about your own concerns about data centers, and your desire that they enact a ban similar to the one just passed in Monterey Park. (Read the text of that measure here: https://montereyparkca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/3073/files/attachment/793) Remind those who are up for election for CITY offices in November that this is a really important issue to you, and their support or opposition with inform how you vote.

(Example: Ventura – your city’s results will differ) There are four Ventura Council members running for re-election in November! We need to WITHHOLD votes and ENDORSEMENTS from those candidates who refuse to get onboard with a ban on data centers!

  • District 1: Liz Campos 
  • District 4: Mayor Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios 
  • District 5: Bill McReynolds 
  • District 6: Jim Duran 

CONTACTS:

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RESOURCES:

A data center ban means we will protect our community for current and future generations, by:

  • Preventing higher electricity rates from being passed on to residents 
  • Safeguarding our limited supply of water 
  • Reducing air pollution and climate impacts 
  • Mitigating 24/7 noise pollution generated by data centers
  • Preserving our quality of life

Data centers burden communities with:

  • Massive energy use and emissions: Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and placing additional strain on an already overburdened power grid.
  • Higher electricity bills for residents: Increased demand on the grid can drive up electricity costs for local households and small businesses.
  • Noise pollution: Large cooling systems and backup generators operate continuously, creating persistent noise that impacts nearby neighborhoods.
  • Lowered property values: Industrial-scale facilities can reduce nearby property values due to noise, visual impacts, and perceived health and safety risks.
  • Public costs for utility system upgrades: Taxpayers may be on the hook for costly upgrades to power, water, and infrastructure needed to support the facility.
  • Very few permanent jobs: Despite their size, data centers typically create only a small number of long-
  • term, on-site jobs once construction is complete.
  • Most benefits go overseas, not to local economies: Profits largely flow to multinational corporations and investors, while local communities absorb the environmental and infrastructure impacts.
  • Corporate welfare – tax losses due to localities incentivizing data center construction, privatizing public goods and funds.
  • The potential for abandoned facilities in the future, with no structured removal/cleanup costs assumed by the corporations themselves.

More information sources for activists and comment-making:

Watch this excellent video here: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZdNkvuD2Xx/

This is another great one, and she brings up additional points on how the competition for these centers will drive warfare over rare earth minerals and their potential for increased surveillance capacity. (https://www.instagram.com/reels/DXNA9eXAjfH/)

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