Paid subscribers make my reporting possible. Consider joining them:
A small Wisconsin city has just notched a big win in its fight against a proposed data center, thanks to grassroots community organizing and support from a growing statewide coalition. And to help guide other communities facing similar challenges, organizers in Menomonie have helped develop a toolkit for taking on hyperscale data centers.
“It’s like whack-a-mole; you knock out one [data center], and another just pops up,” says Blaine Halverson, an organizer in the city of about 16,800 residents. “We’re trying, in real time and against the clock, to do something to protect our community, and now we’re trying to help other communities do that proactively.”
Local struggles against data center development projects are kicking off across the country as developers descend on unsuspecting residents with plans to build huge, warehouse-like structures that house the computing power driving the increasing use of artificial intelligence in their backyards.
As of last October, there were about 3,000 new data centers being built or planned nationwide. Some experts speculate that global spending on data centers could reach $3 trillion by 2029.
Menomonie’s story is similar to those of other communities in Wisconsin. The state passed a sales and use tax exemption for qualified data centers in 2023, just as the AI boom was accelerating with the release of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude. Soon, a wave of data center projects was washing over Wisconsin towns.
There are now more than $57 billion worth of proposed data center projects across the state. At least five of those projects are behemoth, hyperscale data centers — including two proposed in Janesville and Kenosha, and three under construction in Beaver Dam, Mount Pleasant, and Port Washington, where voters this month approved a first-of-its-kind referendum restricting future data center developments. Organizers quashed another proposed hyperscale data center in DeForest earlier this year.
“These proposals were coming fast and furious,” says Brittany Keyes, clean air policy manager at Healthy Climate Wisconsin. “Community members were caught off guard, not given much time, and really scrambling to organize, get information, engage their elected officials, and make a difference.”
‘In the dark until the last minute’
News of a $1.6 billion data center project proposed in Menomonie broke in July 2025, after city leadership had already begun holding closed-door meetings with Balloonist, LLC. The development firm proposed the data center but has never disclosed which tech company would operate it.
Menomonie’s city administrator and other officials have also signed nondisclosure agreements with Balloonist. The city administrator signed his in February 2024, about 18 months before the public learned anything about the project. Leaders in other communities have signed similar agreements.
By the time Menomonie residents learned that a secretive development firm planned to build a data center on 320 acres of farmland on the outskirts of town, it was only weeks before the city council voted to annex and rezone the land to move the project forward. Organizers were fighting an uphill battle.
“The playing field isn’t horizontal; it’s almost vertical,” Halverson says. “You’ve got big tech, the for-profit utilities, the legislature, the state economic development corporation, and all that up on the high end, bearing down with all of their power on a community that was kept in the dark until the last minute.”
Residents had serious concerns about the project. While companies often win major tax breaks by promising jobs and economic stimulation, data centers bring few permanent jobs and can drain municipal water resources, drive up electric bills, rob cities of tax revenues, and cause damaging noise, light, and air pollution.
Already, Wisconsin residents have seen some of these impacts at data center sites in Port Washington and Beaver Dam. Residents in Port Washington have complained about the disruption caused by around-the-clock construction at the new data center. Families near the construction in Beaver Dam have reported that their wells have run dry.
“Data center construction is the most cruel thing a city can do to its residents,” says Sarah Zarling, who has been fighting the Beaver Dam project and supporting organizers in Menomonie. “The impacts are just absolutely immense. They’re life changing.”
Building a coalition
Menomonie residents took to social media and the streets to raise the alarm about the data center proposal and organize community members. They met to share information, staged demonstrations, and began attending city council meetings in growing numbers.
By September 2025, there were over 10,000 Menomonie residents and allies in a Stop the Menomonie Data Center Facebook group — more than half the town’s population.
Although the Menomonie City Council voted to annex and rezone the land for the data center in early September, pressure from local campaigners was so great that Mayor Randy Knaack announced at a Sept. 22 city council meeting that he had notified Balloonist that the city would not be moving forward with a development agreement. More good news came in January when the Menomonie City Council voted unanimously to place additional regulations on data center projects.
At the same time, Menomonie organizers were making connections with others in Wisconsin facing similar fights. Those efforts grew into a statewide coalition. “We were able to bring folks together and create a statewide network that is able to support each other wherever they are in facing these proposals,” Keyes says.
Now, when a new data center pops up in Wisconsin’s Big Tech whack-a-mole, organizers have a pool of resources at their disposal to help beat it back.
In February, Zarling was in Menomonie for a community town hall event where she gave a presentation about “community organizing tactics and what it’s like having ground broken and construction happening on the front lines” in Beaver Dam.
At that town hall event, attendees developed a list of 42 recommendations they want Menomonie city councilors to consider and incorporate into future ordinances to better protect the city from proposals like Balloonist’s. The recommendations focus on transparency and community protection, administrative review, infrastructure and fiscal protections, and zoning protections.
To show that support for those recommendations stretches beyond those who attended the town hall, organizers left signature sheets at 11 local businesses. About 500 residents added their names in the first four days; that number has since grown to about 1,000, organizers say. Halverson expects the recommendations will be considered at an upcoming Menomonie City Council meeting.
Statewide action
One of the statewide coalition’s greatest achievements is the Big Tech Unchecked Toolkit. Published in December 2025 by Healthy Climate Wisconsin and other coalition partners, the toolkit includes information on what data centers are, their impacts on communities, and success stories from struggles across Wisconsin, including Menomonie’s. A webinar held in January to introduce the toolkit attracted an audience of almost 200 people.
Thanks to the advocacy of local organizers, Menomonie’s state representative, Republican Clint Moses, has also introduced a bill to prohibit nondisclosure agreements for data center proposals in the state.
Other data center-related bills have also been introduced, although Keyes argues none go far enough. She says what’s needed is a “pause to protect,” meaning a moratorium on data center construction to allow meaningful guardrails to be developed and implemented.“We are pushing for adequate protection for the environment and community health because right now, we are without protection, without guardrails. It is irresponsible, and we need a common-sense pause.”
Demonstrators from across Wisconsin gathered at the state capitol to show support for a moratorium during a statewide day of action on Feb. 12. Halverson, who was also in Madison to share Menomonie’s story with lawmakers, says that while legislators scramble, the statewide coalition will continue to support communities.
“It’s about proactivity; we need to have a plan for what to do if one of these all of a sudden bubbles to the surface,” Halverson says. “This statewide group is getting pretty adept at getting people organized.”
Zarling agrees: “Organizing swiftly and fiercely and relentlessly is the key.”
This story was originally published by Next City as part of In the Shadow of the Server, a series on the fight over urban technology infrastructure — who builds it, who benefits, and how local leaders can push back. Get Next City’s stories in your inbox: nextcity.org/newsletter.
