In February 2026, Ben Murray’s plans were cut short by a snowstorm. He was scheduled to drive up from Nashville, TN, to Manchester, the Ohio village where his mother was born, to start building a house. He and his fiancée planned to build on his great-grandmother’s farmland, nestled against the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. By the time he arrived in Manchester two weeks later, news had emerged: a developer planned to build a data center, just two miles away. 

Ben is no stranger to data centers. As a senior researcher at Food & Water Watch, he’s part of a team that has dug deep into the data center boom. For the past two years, he has surfaced reports, analyzed project proposals, and reviewed the science on just what this boom is doing to our water, climate, energy bills, and planet. And now, the fight has come to his soon-to-be backyard.

Equipped with research, Ben dove into efforts to stop the data center. He joined community members in attending Township meetings, speaking with local elected officials, and going door to door to invite neighbors into the fight. In February, the community won an initial victory — the Sprigg Township Board of Trustees approved a one-year pause on the proposed data center. 

Across the country, state and national leaders have offered lucrative incentives to lure data centers to set up shop. But at the same time, communities are prying open “done deals” and dragging plans to a halt. From California to New Jersey, they’re standing up to Big Tech and holding their officials accountable to them, not corporate developers. 

In April, I sat down with Ben to talk about Manchester’s fight and lessons for the rest of the state and country. This interview has been edited for clarify and length.

Can you describe Adams County and your relationship to it?

My mom grew up in Manchester, OH, a village in Adams County. I’ve been coming here my whole life, spending summers here and holidays. My aunts and uncles and cousins live here. Before we started work on this house, I visited every few months. Now, every few weeks, I drive up from where I currently live in Nashville to work on the house, but also help with the data center fight. 

The nature here is so great. The stars, the lack of noise — it’s a very preserved area. In a lot of ways, it hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years. 

Manchester has seen a really steady economic decline since the height of the coal industry. Two coal plants were the biggest employers in the region, and they both closed about ten years ago.

Adams County is one of the poorest counties in the state, and the opioid epidemic in the early 2000s and 2010s significantly affected the area. At the same time, the community is strong. When I’m here, I’ll spend the day just stopping by places and helping people out on the farm.

Because of how agricultural this area is, there are always people to lend a hand. It’s a social thing, not a chore. You can call anyone to help you out, and everybody knows they can call you.

What are the dangers of the data center proposal in Manchester, and how does it compare to what you’re seeing in your research with Food & Water Watch? 

Learning about this proposal confirmed the conclusion I was seeing in my research: data center proposals have so little grounding in reality when it comes to water needs, power needs, and community needs. 

Already, I knew data centers in general demand outrageous amounts of energy and water. For this data center in particular, the developers are proposing to use 1.3 GW of power by 2031. This would be 31 times as much power as the rest of Adams County uses. That’s absurd.

The developer also says they’re going to take water from the river, but they’ll also take water from municipal water sources. Just based on the size of this proposal, we know the water demands will be huge. We’re talking millions of gallons a day. And that will put pressure on the quality of the existing water supply and infrastructure.

It’s hard to identify exact concerns because of the secrecy around this project.

Speaking of, what red flags did you see in the way this project moved forward?

The community only found out about it because a reporter from Channel 9 in Ohio found the site request to the grid operator, PJM. The reporter asked the County economic development officer about it on TV, and that was the first time the public heard anything about it. 

But there are emails back to 2024 about this project, which we found through records requests to the County. Meanwhile, the public hasn’t heard anything from the developers at all. They remained entirely nameless and faceless until the records requests found that it’s going to be an Amazon data center. 

I try to go to the Commissioners’ meeting every week, and so far, they’re either not answering our questions, lying to us, or giving us developer talking points. One claim was “30 to 50 jobs per building.” At one meeting, I called them out on this number and explained why it was B.S. I asked, “I’m guessing you got this from the developer — is that true?” And eventually one of the Commissioners confirmed that was the case. 

In Scioto County, the Commissioners even signed non-disclosure agreements regarding a data center proposal there. That’s really out of the ordinary because they’re elected officials. So the secrecy is a big part of the concern in this region. Adams County’s Director of Economic & Community Development has also signed an NDA.

How is data center development mirroring previous industries in the region?

Coal has traditionally been mined in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, and then sent up the Ohio River to the power plants here. These plants were huge employers for many, many years. But at the same time, many people who have lived near them have seen significant health impacts and water quality issues.

This is influencing how people here are seeing data centers. They’ve experienced the extractive nature of the coal industry. They saw firsthand how, once it was no longer economically feasible for the industry to operate, it up and left, leaving large scars on the land and landfills of fly ash. There are a lot of existing sites that are reminders of what that was like.

Now, this region is once again becoming a sacrifice zone. People here work a lot and can’t make it to a 9 a.m. Commissioners’ meeting. These are small communities of a few thousand people, at most. It makes it hard to get critical mass to fight back. But these communities will get saddled with the extractive nature of data centers.

How are data centers benefiting from local and state tax incentives?

On a state level, Ohio has been very friendly to data center development. The state gives data centers sales tax abatements for all the construction equipment they buy. That alone costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars each year. 

On the local level, data centers are getting property tax abatements and other abatements. And these are not negotiated by the County Commissioners or the people. They’re negotiated by law firms on behalf of the Commissioners. 

These firms have no incentive to prioritize the long-term prosperity of the community — just to get a deal done as fast as possible. So their goal is to actually minimize public pushback and awareness on the issue. I’ve read blog posts on the websites of these firms covering subjects like how to create a tax abatement program that circumvents the need for school board approval.

These abatements mean less money for schools, EMS services, fire departments, and road improvements. There’s also the opportunity cost — in other words, what good thing doesn’t get built because we have a 1.3 GW data center hogging land and resources?

That’s something I really want people to understand — Adams County and counties like it have the water, land, and infrastructure that data centers need. Meanwhile, the data centers are not going to create jobs or long-term economic development. They have nothing the county needs. So why should the County give handouts to the data center?

These data centers do provide significant tax revenue during the first year or two, during construction. But towns across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the Dakotas saw during the fracking boom that this is not a good plan for long-term economic development. 

What has the work of opposing this data center looked like? And what have you learned from the experience so far?

We’re attending a lot of County Commissioner meetings, Township Trustee meetings, and school board meetings. We’re meeting people in power at their offices, and we’re organizing protests to build awareness. We even planned a music festival on May 9 in Manchester.

I’ve learned the most effective way to make a difference in this kind of fight is to learn from a nearby area. These processes are not meant to be easy to understand, so you learn a lot from a county or township in your state that is further along in the process than you are.

For example, we’ve been keeping an eye on a wetlands permit that a construction company requested for the data centers in Adams County. Scioto County has a similar permit outstanding. 

When people in Scioto County learned about their permit, I could talk them through what they needed to do and what questions they needed to ask. But I knew that because I spent multiple days trying to figure it out myself.

There are a few resolutions we’ve been collecting signatures for, including data center moratoriums in Sprigg and Monroe Township. There’s also a grassroots effort circulating a statewide petition for an amendment to the state constitution that would put a stop to the construction of data centers over 25 MW. Ballot measures are monumental efforts, and the legislature should really just act to put the brakes on the data center frenzy. The hundreds of volunteers working every day on this measure in the hopes of stopping this irresponsible development are inspiring.

All this organizing has led to a voluntary pause with the developer in Sprigg Township, and a binding one-year moratorium, or pause, in neighboring Monroe Township. Congratulations! What comes next for you and the community?

Both Monroe Township’s moratorium and Sprigg’s pause have initiated zoning processes, which would restrict the use of the land to certain activities. Agricultural zoning for farming, residential zoning for homes, industrial zoning for heavy industry, et cetera.

Zoning would open the doors for a concrete way to stop data centers: banning industrial zoning from these areas, or making them “conditional use,” where the Board would have to approve any new use. 

Now, we’re looking at maybe a public hearing and a community town hall. We’ll continue to speak to decision makers, get the word out, and attend these meetings. 

What would you say to someone who’s just learning about a data center or another project that harms their community?

If you’re new to this fight, reach out to experts on the topic. Our work at Food & Water Watch produces important research and organizing information around these fights.

It’s also helpful to know the people you’re talking to personally. And if you’re not from the area, acknowledge it or talk to people with that in mind. 

I’ve also found that so much of this is context-dependent. It depends on the state, depends on the resources at risk, and depends if your area is zoned or not zoned. 

It’s been a really challenging and sometimes discouraging fight. By the nature of the process the developers are using, these projects sometimes feel inevitable. Some people tell me, “It’s probably a done deal already.” But I really don’t think it is. If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here. 

The voluntary pause and the initiating of the zoning — those came about just because people spoke up and turned out to these meetings. Otherwise, nothing would have happened at all. 

I’ve met so many awesome people and solidified friendships by bonding over this common cause. We’re doing this because we want the best for Manchester, for the county, for the Ohio River Valley, and no one can convince us we’re wrong. There’s something really positive and powerful in that.

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