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Ohio’s Data Center Boom Hits the “Wait, Are We Sure About This?” Phase

Ohio has spent years selling itself as the Silicon Heartland. Data centers. AI. Server farms rising from former farmland like somebody asked ChatGPT to design a cornfield with no corn.

This week, Ohioans showed up at the Statehouse with a reasonable question: what exactly are we giving up to power all of this?

At a June 1 hearing before a new bipartisan Select Committee on Data Centers, 35+ residents signed up to speak and another 70 submitted written testimony. Their concerns: water use, energy demand, tax breaks, loss of rural land, and whether Ohio is building the future or just turning itself into a very large charging brick.

The pushback isn’t just neighbors yelling at zoning boards anymore. A grassroots effort is collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment to ban large data centers, uniting Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, farmers, and environmentalists, which is impressive considering most of those groups can barely agree on what temperature to set the thermostat.

One striking moment came from 12-year-old Samuel Menges of Lorain County, who told lawmakers he wants to be a farmer and doesn’t want Ohio to lose more farmland to massive developments.

Data centers aren’t imaginary villains. They power the internet, cloud, AI, streaming, search, and every modern convenience we pretend is weightless. But they’re not weightless. They require land, power, water, and in Ohio, a whole lot of public generosity.

Ohio has the sixth-most data centers in the country: 232 statewide.

137 in central Ohio alone.

Meta’s New Albany site, now being expanded, sits on 766 acres, more than a square mile. That’s not “just a building.”

Even Gov. Mike DeWine tapped the brakes, pausing a tax break that reportedly cost nearly $1.6 billion last year.

Ohio wants to be part of the future. That part makes sense. But maybe the future should answer a few questions before it gets another 1,000 acres and a tax incentive.

Thoughts?