By Breanne Green, Michigan Advance
Something is happening in Livingston County’s Howell Township that every Michigander should pay attention to, no matter their politics.
On a quiet Sunday morning in September, I came across a legal notice referencing a rezoning request for several large rural parcels. The notice didn’t say much, but someone online mentioned it was for a massive data center campus.
I froze.
I’ve been following news about data centers across the country all year and even other parts of Michigan.
I never imagined one would come here.
I posted the notice in a local Facebook group, hoping a few neighbors might know more. Within hours, hundreds of comments poured in. People were scared, confused, and unexpectedly united. Howell is a town where people rarely agree on anything, and yet most of us were uniting against this. The conversations were robust and civil.
Then they were gone. Deleted from Facebook.
Residents who live near the site told me they had no idea about the proposal until a letter arrived in the mail or a neighbor knocked on their door. I emailed the township asking for more information just two days after the notice appeared. I didn’t receive the documents until November 4 (seven weeks later) and only after submitting a FOIA request costing hundreds of dollars. What the emails revealed wasn’t necessarily illegal, but it was deeply troubling.
While the community was left in the dark, key conversations had already happened with a small handful of people. By the time the public learned about the project, the rezoning and site plan were already moving full speed ahead.
The landowner seeking the rezoning had helped township officials plan the logistics of the public meeting, including recommending that it be livestreamed, and strategized about keeping people outside under tents and letting them in the building one at a time.
Safety and accessibility were barely mentioned and glow sticks were offered as the solution to safety concerns about people walking down a dark, curving, busy road in the dark. The emails also mentioned that the local utility company was pressuring him to make sure the hearing didn’t get postponed.
Public meetings are supposed to belong to the public. They are not supposed to be co-designed by the private party asking for a special deal.
No matter where someone stands on a project, that should bother all of us.
Good, solid, well thought-out projects don’t need secrecy, non disclosure agreements (NDAs), or fear of public pushback. Only bad ones do.
– Breanne Green – Howell resident and a leader of Stop the Data Centers Livingston County.
And this situation isn’t unique to Howell Township. It’s happening across the state. Township halls in Pavilion, Augusta, Kalkaska, Dundee, Saline, and other communities have been filled beyond capacity with residents saying the same thing:
Slow down. Tell the truth. Respect our community.
Residents have good reason to be worried.
A single hyperscale data center can use as much electricity as 750,000-1,000,000 homes. Michigan’s utilities admit they’re being flooded with interest. Consumers Energy has received inquiries totaling 15 gigawatts of potential data center load; DTE another 7 gigawatts.
That’s 22 gigawatts – the equivalent of powering 16 million homes.
Independent experts estimate that even one 100-megawatt data center can require nearly $500 million in new power plants, battery farms, and grid upgrades.
If the company scales back or closes (as many tech projects have nationwide) those “stranded” costs don’t disappear. They get pushed onto all of us through higher electric bills.
And the water impacts are just as serious.
Data centers can use between one and five million gallons of water per day for cooling.
In Michigan, we like to think our freshwater supply is endless. It isn’t. The Alliance for the Great Lakes warns that heavy withdrawals and evaporating millions of gallons in cooling towers can stress aquifers, lower private wells, and affect nearby rivers.
Groundwater is connected. It doesn’t recognize property lines or promises in a rezoning packet.
Yet despite all these concerns, Howell Township residents were given just 14 days’ notice for the largest land-use proposal in recent county history. Planning commissioners didn’t receive much more than the public. One commissioner said he barely slept for two weeks trying to understand what was happening.
At the same time, the tech industry driving this boom is openly admitting it’s risky and unstable. Jeff Bezos has called the AI investment wave an “industrial bubble.” Mark Zuckerberg said he’d rather risk “misspending a couple hundred billion dollars” than fall behind. Even Michael Burry, the investor who correctly predicted the 2008 crash, has bet against major AI companies.
These billionaires see data centers as a gamble worth taking.
But for communities like Howell Township, the risks aren’t theoretical. We’re the ones staring down decades of construction, new power plants, battery farms, diesel generators, transmission lines, water withdrawals, noise, traffic, heat, and light. All this built to serve companies who may not be here in five years.
And when the bubble pops, they walk away.
As regulators plan for Michigan’s energy future, environmentalists speak out on data centers
We stay with the costs.
The good news is that when regular people stand together, it works, even across political lines.
Just across Lake Michigan in Caledonia, Wisconsin, residents pushed back on a proposed Microsoft data center, and even after receiving local approval, Microsoft abruptly withdrew citing “community feedback.”
And in Port Washington and Menomonie, two more nearby communities, residents demanded transparency, and those projects ultimately stalled or paused.
The movement has become large enough that Microsoft now warns investors about “community opposition, local moratoriums, and hyper-local dissent.”
One of the largest corporations on Earth is telling Wall Street that ordinary people in small towns can stop billion-dollar deals.
That shouldn’t scare us. It should empower us!
Here in Howell Township, thousands of residents are calling for a six-month moratorium on data center approvals.
This is not a ban. This is not “anti-technology.” It is simply a pause and the only ethical path forward.
A pause gives the township time to:
- update zoning and ordinances
- get independent environmental and infrastructure reviews
- understand water, energy, noise, and emergency impacts
- create rules that protect residents-not developers
If a project is truly good for us, it will still be good after careful study. Good, solid, well thought-out projects don’t need secrecy, non disclosure agreements (NDAs), or fear of public pushback. Only bad ones do.
I love this community. I love the people in it. And I believe in fairness, freedom, and local control. That means decisions made in the open, with honest information. It doesn’t mean rushed deals pushed by trillion-dollar corporations and utility companies who do not live here.
Something big is happening in Livingston County. But we are not powerless.
We are stronger when we stand together. And the power is, and always has been, with the people. Now is the time to use it. Show up to the meetings. Give a public comment. This is our home. Our water. Our future. We will decide what happens here.
- To learn more or get involved, visit: Stop the Data Centers – Livingston County
- The Howell Township board will meet Thursday, Nov. 20 at 6:30 p.m. at Howell High School’s Rod Bushey Performing Arts Center, 1200 W.Grand River in Howell.
Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.
