Supervisors Back Data Center Rules

Data center. (CC0)

Milwaukee County supervisors are backing legislation at the state level that would begin regulating data centers, and their development, in Wisconsin.

The Data Center Accountability Bill was introduced in November by state Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin and Rep. Angela Stroud, to create new laws governing their use of energy and water, and establishing protections for workers.

The bill is intended “to protect residents, to protect our natural resources like Lake Michigan, to ensure the health and well being, and also our financial well being, because we don’t know the bottom line economic impact on the data centers as well,” said Sup. Anne O’Connor, who sponsored the county resolution expressing support for the bill.

The county board’s Committee on Intergovernmental Relations passed the resolution unanimously Monday.

Data centers house the servers and physical infrastructure needed for digital applications and services. In Wisconsin, and elsewhere, the explosion in data center construction is driven by the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) arms race, with technology companies and nations pouring huge resources into the technology in a bid to dominate private markets and prevail in state-level competition.

Microsoft is investing $7 billion in AI infrastructure in Wisconsin, including a $4 billion data center in Mount Pleasant. In Port Washington, a $15 billion data center campus is proposed under the Stargate initiative by major tech firms Oracle and OpenAI in partnership with SoftBank, a Japanese multinational investment firm.

Data centers have proven politically controversial and, according to one survey, unpopular. The Wisconsin Conservation Voters have led a campaign pushing for data center regulation and transparency in Wisconsin, and are a major backer of the Data Center Accountability bill.

A primary concern is the general uncertainty over the impact of the new data centers.

“There’s also massive amounts of secrecy, speculation and just an overall lack of transparency when it comes to these data centers,” said Ian Schmitt-Ernst, southeast organizer with Wisconsin Conservation Voters, during the county committee meeting.

Data centers require huge amounts of water for cooling systems. Schmitt-Ernst told the committee some require as much as 5 million gallons of water a day. A provision in the proposed legislation would require greater transparency about water and energy use.

They also require huge amounts of energy. The two data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington could eventually be consuming more energy than 53% of the homes in the entire state of Wisconsin, as Urban Milwaukee has reported.

The legislation would also create wage requirements for workers employed by the data centers, which are being developed by some of the largest and most valuable corporations in the world. Workers would be entitled to a prevailing wage or any wages negotiated through a collective bargaining agreement, provided they are higher than the local prevailing wage.

Before approving O’Connor’s resolution Monday, the committee adopted an amendment that conditioned the county’s support on an exemption for Milwaukee County government from energy-use fees proposed for large energy users.

The resolution will go before the full board later this month. If approved it will lend the authority of Milwaukee County government to growing concern about the proliferation of data centers.