Axios - Civil rights groups are increasingly concerned that AI's rapidly spreading physical infrastructure is deepening climate burdens for communities of color.
Massive data centers require vast quantities of water, energy and land.
- Many of these centers are clustered in regions where marginalized communities already face higher levels of air pollution, industrial zoning and climate vulnerability.
Civil rights groups say these impacts resemble earlier patterns seen with highways, refineries and manufacturing: pollution concentrated where political resistance is weakest and property values are lowest.
- Data centers can also consume millions of gallons of water per day and use as much electricity as a small city, driving up energy and water use costs for poor residents.
A supercomputer data center built by Elon Musk's xAI in southwest Memphis, a historically Black neighborhood, faces a legal challenge from the NAACP. The group says the site's gas generators are violating the Clean Air Act...
In Amarillo, Texas, advocates are fighting what developers call the world's largest AI data center, warning it could drain the Ogallala Aquifer, a shrinking water lifeline for the Texas Panhandle and southern Great Plains. Latino residents and rural water advocates fear losing access to groundwater already stretched thin by agriculture and drought....
Northern Virginia — site of the world's largest data center hub — is seeing mounting resistance in Loudoun and Prince William counties, where Black families say the build-out is overwhelming their communities.
Near Tucson, Ariz., a majority-Latino city strained by megadrought, a proposed "Project Blue" data center could consume millions of gallons of water per year.
"Data centers by design do not have a lot of jobs. It's predatory. They target cities desperate for economic development," LaTricea Adams, CEO of the Memphis-based Young, Gifted & Green, tells Axios....
As AI data centers expand across the West, Indigenous nations say the industry is accelerating resource extraction without tribal consent. Full story
The NAACP announced it's bringing together advocates, researchers and regional leaders for a two-day strategy summit in Washington this week to discuss AI data centers.
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