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She built her dream home in Perry Village more than 20 years ago. Southwest of town, fields all around, the Perry Nuclear Plant visible in the distance. She and her husband watched the property double in value over the next two decades. This spring, she found out the fields were going away.

Not sold to a neighbor. Not zoned for the senior housing or the hydroponic tomato operation that had once been floated for the old nursery site down the road.

A California company called Province Group had a deal in place for 230 acres — a sixth of the entire village — to build a seven-building data center campus a mile from the elementary school and next door to the public library. Seven buildings, running around the clock, where there used to be a beautiful view with open fields.

She hadn’t voted on it. Hadn’t been asked about it. Nobody in Perry Village had.

“I never got a say or vote on this,” she said. “Who decided for us? Who sold us out?”

The land deal with Province Group had been quietly in the works since 2024. For two years, Perry Village’s mayor and village officials negotiated the terms in private, under a confidentiality agreement with the developer — one that tried to classify the negotiations as “trade secrets” to keep them outside the reach of Ohio’s public records law. It only became public because a newsroom filed a formal records request and forced the issue.1

By the time residents learned the true scope of the project, the developer already had a purchase agreement in hand — not just with the village, but also with the township and the local economic development district. Three separate government bodies had quietly signed off before the public ever got a vote.

Perry Village. Shalersville Township. Lordstown. Ravenna. Twinsburg. Tallmadge. The list goes on.

Eighty miles south, in Shalersville Township, the same story is playing out with different names on the paperwork. A Singapore-based company, Bitdeer, wants 257 acres near the Ohio Turnpike2,3 for a 15-building campus that could eventually draw 750 megawatts of power — enough electricity to run hundreds of thousands of homes, poured instead into a facility that will employ almost no one once it’s built.

  • Trumbull County — In Lordstown 4,5, the village council banned data centers 6-0 in November 2025 after more than 100 residents packed a meeting. The developer sued in the Ohio Supreme Court. Under legal pressure, the village repealed its ban and replaced it with a moratorium instead — and the case is still pending today. Vienna Township 66 has its own moratorium in place and is using the time to explore permanent zoning changes.
  • Portage County — Ravenna7 (unanimous 1-year moratorium) and Shalersville (moratorium since October 2024, renewed twice, proposed Bitdeer campus)
  • Lake County — Perry Village (proposed Province Group campus, NDA controversy) and Painesville Township (short-term prohibition)
  • Summit County — Twinsburg7 and Tallmadge8 (both passed moratoriums); Norton officials rejected a separate proposal outright.
  • Cuyahoga County — Cleveland City Council9 Utilities Committee voted to move forward with a three-month moratorium on new data centers, in response to growing concerns including the proposed Lakeland Equity project in Slavic Village.
  • Lorain County — Avon10 passed a short-term prohibition.
  • Ashtabula County – Conneaut11 city officials say there are no current plans for a data center, but a feasibility discussion by M2 Development Solutions has already sparked resident pushback and questions about incentives.

Province Group in Perry. Bitdeer in Shalersville. Bristolville in Lordstown. Lakeland Equity in Slavic Village. M2 Development in Conneaut. Different logos, same playbook. The companies keep telling residents they’re the good ones — but the pattern across every one of these towns is the same: communities are being asked to trust the paperwork after the paperwork was already written without them. Every one of these towns said no, in the only ways they had left, after the decision had already been made for them.

Ohio Doesn’t Owe Big Tech Our Air, Our Water, or Our Future

Maria isn’t interested in finding a “fair deal” with an industry like this. She’s interested in stopping it — and giving Ohioans the power to say no before the damage is done. ​

Read Maria’s Position

We got played.

In 2013, Ohio quietly handed out tax breaks meant to attract data centers. Reasonable idea, at the time. But “attract investment” turned into 40-year, $600-million-a-pop exemptions12 for Google, Meta, and Amazon — and the legislature didn’t find out what it was actually costing the state until they read about it in the newspaper, same as everyone else.

The original projection for 2025 was $136 million in lost tax revenue. The actual number came in at $1.6 billion.13

$1.6 billion over 365 days =
$4.4 million a day in tax breaks.

Meanwhile, Ohio utilities have repeatedly assured ratepayers that data center demand wouldn’t drive up bills. It did. Data centers drove 63% of the price spike14 — a $9.3 billion cost getting spread across 65 million customers, families included, for power they’ll never use and buildings they’ll never be allowed inside.

And the jobs — the whole reason any of this was supposed to be worth it? Lordstown’s proposed data center5 would bring an estimated $3.6 billion in private investment. In exchange: 120 permanent jobs. That’s $30 million per job.

We have a right to ask: Who is getting the better deal? Hint: it’s not us.

What you never even thought about — because they made sure you didn’t.

There’s a reason these projects move fast and the public hearings feel thin: the real risks — noise, water, and air — aren’t things a developer will volunteer to discuss. They are things a community has to already know to ask about. Most never get the chance.

First, let me paint a picture for you.

Province Group’s proposed Perry Village campus (230 acres) is roughly 175 football fields — on land that’s a sixth of the entire village15. Bitdeer’s proposed Shalersville campus16 (roughly 215–230 acres) is about 195 football fields. That’s not a building going in next door. That’s the landscape disappearing.

Continuous noise from a hyperscale data center’s cooling fans and transformers typically runs 60 to 80 decibels17— the sound of a busy street. Except that a busy street goes quiet at night. This doesn’t. It’s a low-frequency hum that runs 24 hours a day, every day, and it’s exactly the kind of noise that travels farthest and proves hardest to escape. And the hum isn’t even the loud part. The backup diesel generators are: monthly load tests push noise to 95–100 decibels— like a motorcycle idling outside your window — and in still nighttime air, those tests can remain audible up to a mile away.

Large hyperscale data centers generally consume one to five million gallons of water per day, which at the high end is equivalent to the water use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people18. Most of it doesn’t come back. Up to 85% of the water data centers use evaporates19 during cooling and never returns to the local water supply. The rest is discharged as wastewater carrying biocide chemicals used to prevent bacteria and algae growth in the cooling system. That has to go somewhere, too.

This is what “investment” looks like up close: a hum you can’t escape, a well that runs dry, air that makes your kids sick — in exchange for a construction crew that packs up and leaves in a year, and a campus that — by the developer’s own numbers — will employ at most 200 people16 on 257 acres. That’s less than one job per acre.

Ohio doesn’t require developers to tell you any of this.

The scale, the sound, the water — none of this is something a developer has to tell you about before the deal is signed.

No noise standard. These facilities run around the clock — cooling towers, diesel generators, a low hum that doesn’t quit20, ever. Ohio has no statewide noise standard, and most rural townships have no decibel limits on the books. That hum becomes the new sound of your neighborhood, permanently, and no one has to warn you it’s coming.

No water disclosure. A single large data center can use hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of water a day — comparable to the daily water use of a small town. Ohio doesn’t require developers to disclose projected water use21 before a project is approved — so communities often find out what they agreed to only after the fact.

No health review. Ohio’s air permitting process22 lets most backup diesel generators skip real scrutiny entirely — companies can file a one-page “permit-by-rule” notice instead of a case-by-case health and emissions review. Every facility runs dozens of these generators, idling and firing, spreading exhaust into the same air kids breathe while walking to school. A recent Columbus-area report found data centers can pose health risks — including increased respiratory illness and premature death23 — for residents living as close as 0.6 miles away. It barely made the news.

A Fast-Depreciating Machine

Here’s what they don’t tell you: the “investment” isn’t even permanent. Data center servers are often refreshed on short lifecycle cycles, sometimes around three to five years24, and retired hardware becomes e-waste unless it is refurbished or reused. That means a data center isn’t a one-time cost to the land it sits on. It’s a permanent cycle of teardown and rebuild, generating pollution and waste for as long as the facility operates — long after the construction jobs are gone.

Where This Goes From Here

Ohio doesn’t have to accept this. Communities have already said no — in Lordstown, in Ravenna, in Shalersville, in Twinsburg — and they deserve the power to make that no stick, instead of being dragged into the Ohio Supreme Court for it.

The next data center is more than likely being negotiated in secret right now. Show up to the next township or village meeting. Ask all the questions. Don’t wait for a records request to find out what’s already been decided.

Here are three great questions to get the conversation started:

  • Has our village/township signed or negotiated any confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement with any company in the past 2 years?
  • Has our village/township received any land purchase inquiries, option agreements, or rezoning requests for large parcels recently? Can we see the agenda and minutes from the executive sessions?
  • Can the council commit, right now, to a public vote and comment period before any land deal or agreement with a developer is finalized?

These projects aren’t inevitable. They’re only permanent if we let them be.

Want to know where I stand and my full position? Read my full plan.

My full plan

Sources

  1. News 5 Cleveland, “Crowd Packs Perry Village Hall to Protest Data Center Project as Tensions Rise Across Ohio.” https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/crowd-packs-perry-village-hall-to-protest-data-center-project-as-tensions-rise-across-ohio
    ↩︎
  2. News 5 Cleveland, “Local Developer, Global Tech Firm Plan Major Data Center Project in Portage County.” https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/local-developer-global-tech-firm-plan-major-data-center-project-in-portage-county
    ↩︎
  3. News 5 Cleveland, “Data Center Discussion Spans 3+ Hours as Shalersville Mulls 257-Acre Project.” https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/oh-portage/data-center-discussion-spans-3-hours-as-shalersville-mulls-257-acre-project
    ↩︎
  4. WKBN, “Lordstown Data Center Case Still Pending in Ohio Supreme Court.” https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/lordstown-news/lordstown-data-center-case-still-pending-in-ohio-supco/
    ↩︎
  5. WKBN, “Data Center Developer Taking Lordstown to Court.” https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/lordstown-news/data-center-developer-taking-lordstown-to-court/
    ↩︎
  6. The Ohio Newsroom / Statehouse News Bureau, “Ohio Towns Are Pushing Back Against Data Centers to Varying Degrees of Success.” https://www.statenews.org/section/the-ohio-newsroom/2026-02-26/ohio-towns-are-pushing-back-against-data-centers-to-varying-degrees-of-success
    ↩︎
  7. News 5 Cleveland, “More Northeast Ohio Communities Are Blocking Data Centers; Business Leaders Are Worried.” https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/more-northeast-ohio-communities-are-blocking-data-centers-business-leaders-are-worried
    ↩︎
  8. Blue Water Healthy Living, “Developers Host May 29 Meeting About Proposed Shalersville Data Center.” https://bluewaterhealthyliving.com/news/national-news/ohio/developers-host-may-29-meeting-about-proposed-shalersville-data-center/ ↩︎
  9. Axios Cleveland, “Cleveland City Council Weighs Data Center Moratorium.” https://www.axios.com/local/cleveland/2026/06/29/cleveland-data-center-moratorium
    ↩︎
  10. Government Technology, “Deadline Looms to Shield Ohioans From Data Center Costs.” https://www.govtech.com/artificial-intelligence/deadline-looms-to-shield-ohioans-from-data-center-costs
    ↩︎
  11. Ashtabula Gazette, “Residents Voice Concerns About Data Centers.” https://gazettenews.com/residents-voice-concerns-about-data-centers/
    ↩︎
  12. The Columbus Dispatch, “Ohio’s Big Tech Data Center Tax Breaks.” https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/state/2026/06/10/ohio-big-tech-data-center-tax-breaks/90475028007/
    ↩︎
  13. Good Jobs First, “Ohio’s Data Center Tax Break.” https://goodjobsfirst.org/ohio-data-center-tax-break/
    ↩︎
  14. Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), “Projected Data Center Growth Spurs PJM Capacity Prices by a Factor of 10.” https://ieefa.org/resources/projected-data-center-growth-spurs-pjm-capacity-prices-factor-10
    ↩︎
  15. Lake County, Ohio. (n.d.). Census. Lake County Ohio Government. https://www.lakecountyohio.gov/census/
    ↩︎
  16. Puleo, L. (2026, June 17). Shalersville Township discusses massive proposed data center at town hall meeting. The Kent Stater. https://kentstater.com/142675/news/shalersville-township-discusses-massive-proposed-data-center-at-town-hall-meeting/
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  17. https://www.lsars.com/data-center-noise
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  18. Nature Forward. (2026). Data centers and water use. https://natureforward.org/data-centers-and-water-use/
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  19. MOST Policy Initiative. (2026). Data center water use [Science note]. https://mostpolicyinitiative.org/science-note/data-center-water-use/
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  20. Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), “Communities Are Raising Noise Pollution Concerns About Data Centers.” https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/communities-are-raising-noise-pollution-concernsabout-data-centers
    ↩︎
  21. World Health Organization, “Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region.” https://www.who.int/europe/puStop Ohio Data Centers, “Data Center Water Usage in Ohio.” https://stopohiodatacenters.org/data-center-water-usage-ohio
    ↩︎
  22. Buckeye Power Sales, “Emission Standards for Stationary and Mobile Generators.” https://ps.buckeyepowersales.com/emission-standards-for-stationary-mobile-generators/
    ↩︎
  23. NBC4 Columbus, “Report: Data Centers’ Air Pollution Associated With Lung Issues, Death.” https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/report-data-centers-air-pollution-associated-with-lung-issues-death/
    ↩︎
  24. Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), “Data Centers and Water Consumption.” https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-cData Center Knowledge, “Ticking Time Bomb: AI Data Centers and the Looming E-Waste Crisis.” https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/green-materials/ticking-time-bomb-ai-data-centers-and-the-looming-e-waste-crisis
    ↩︎

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