Residents of Menomonie mounted a successful protest against a huge campus proposed by Meta – and community resistance to the AI boom is growingIn the spring of 2025, Sydney Brennan was riding high. The 22-year-old was finishing college and was a newly elected councilwoman in Menomonie, a city of about 17,000 in the lush plains of north-western Wisconsin.Weeks into the new job, she was invited to a meeting with consultants pitching a $1.6bn AI hyperscale datacenter campus that an undisclosed big tech company wanted to build just outside of town. The project’s numbers were eye-opening: a 320-acre site that would use an estimated 75,000 gallons of water per day, making it the most significant development in Menomonie’s nearly 150-year history. Continue reading...
How a small Wisconsin city scuttled a secretive $1.6bn datacenter project
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Guardian BusinessBy Daniel A Medina with photographs by Eric Ruby
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Residents of Menomonie mounted a successful protest against a huge campus proposed by Meta – and community resistance to the AI boom is growing In the spring of 2025, Sydney Brennan was riding high. The 22-year-old was finishing college and was a newly elected councilwoman in Menomonie, a city of about 17,000 in the lush plains of north-western Wisconsin. Weeks into the new job, she was invited to a meeting with consultants pitching a $1.6bn AI hyperscale datacenter campus that an undisclosed bi
Key Takeaways
- How a small Wisconsin city scuttled a secretive $1.6bn datacenter project.
- Residents of Menomonie mounted a successful protest against a huge campus proposed by Meta – and community resistance to the AI boom is growing In the spring of 2025, Sydney Brennan was riding high.
- The 22-year-old was finishing college and was a newly elected councilwoman in Menomonie, a city of about 17,000 in the lush plains of north-western Wisconsin.
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