Rural Ohioans Seek To Ban Data Centers Through Constitutional Amendment
- Reference: 0181025880
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/17/2145208/rural-ohioans-seek-to-ban-data-centers-through-constitutional-amendment
- Source link:
> Gerber and a handful of residents from Adams and Brown counties gathered about 1,800 signatures in eight days to start the ballot process. They submitted those petitions to the Ohio attorney general's office on Monday. That's the first step before supporters can begin collecting signatures statewide.
>
> State law requires at least 1,000 valid voter signatures to begin the process. The petitions must also include the full text of the proposed amendment and a summary explaining what it would do. Attorney General Dave Yost's office now has 10 days to decide whether the summary fairly and truthfully describes the proposal. If it does, the measure will move to the Ohio Ballot Board. Supporters would then need to gather about 413,000 valid signatures by July to place the amendment before voters this November.
The report notes that a 25-megawatt limit "would effectively block most modern data centers from being built in Ohio."
[1] https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/03/rural-ohioans-seek-to-ban-data-centers-through-constitutional-amendment.html
[2] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/18/200251/ais-water-and-electricity-use-soars-in-2025
[3] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/05/0445216/as-us-communities-start-fighting-back-many-datacenters-are-blocked
Voters are dumb. (Score:2)
If this passes it calls the whole concept of democracy into question.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the policy is dumb but the concerns are real and should be addressed even if the proposed solution is stupid. If the government functioned properly then this would kick start a discussion on whether governments should have to charge for all the externalities (e.g. additional power capacity, policing and water) associated with businesses or if they should be allowed to waive those costs to promote more business.
Good luck, Ohio! (Score:1)
More power to you! ;>
NIMBY? (Score:3)
To be clear, I support controls on data centre construction which take much more account of what citizens want and what's good for their health. I think citizens should be able to say "Hell no!" and have the government honour their wishes.
In addition to the factors mentioned in TFS, there are some really serious health issues that come with having a data centre in your general vicinity. One of the most insidious is infrasonic emissions which can cause physical and mental health problems over a very large area surrounding the centres. So placing one close to residences and other businesses can be a major health problem for a lot of people.
At the same time, I'm sure these people, like most of us, watch a lot of YouTube, Prime, Netflix, etc. So they want to benefit from data centres - they just don't want them located in their back yards. I sympathize with them, and would likely do what they're doing; but the data centres have to go somewhere, and anyone who uses the internet a lot is on shaky ethical ground when insisting that the negative consequences be someone else's problem.
Sure, a lot of new data centres are being built just to run LLMs. But if AI hadn't come along, they would still be looking for places to build server farms - it would just be happening at a slower rate. There are no easy answers; but a good start would be to take back control of the government from tech broligarchs and other big corporations. That would force a dialog which might yield solutions. Until then, corporations will be predators and average citizens will be victims.
Next Ohio Governor Ramaswamy Will Ignore This (Score:2)
As a Trump disciple Ohio's next governor simply ignore any restriction on Data Centers. So any Ohioans better not vote for him regardless of the tens millions of ad buys he has already purchased to fool the public into voting against their interests (much like Kansas) and will increase his buy to $50 million to scare Ohioans into voting for him.
However, there is [1]a glimmer of hope [newsweek.com] that the baffle them with lies tactic won't work this time. Trump has hopefully, taught everyone that by now.
After all according
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/vivek-ramaswamy-dealt-double-polling-blow-in-ohio-governor-race-11684958
Data centres is just headline catching (Score:2)
It shouldn't be that the residents are fighting data centre builds, it should be fighting anything that impacts a healthy life balance.
If a construction now, or in the future starts to impact life, then it's operation should be shut down until it ceases to affect life. Data centres are built too quickly for people to get a handle on the situation, then it's just taken as status quo. If this were a warehouse or car park that operated the same way and polluted the water, or made the area more liable to flash
What Mama Pajama Saw (Score:2)
Regardless of anything else, no one should need a constitutional amendment to do this. This can just be a regular statute law. Constitutions are for things like birthright citizenship, or "no unlawful search and seizure", or "thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind".
Re: (Score:3)
Are normal residents of Ohio able to call a vote on "regular statute laws" without the legislature? That would be my guess as to why they did it this way, as an end-run around a nonresponsive legislature.
Re: (Score:2)
Except the legislature is corrupt.
The scumbuckets we elect see these taxpayer bills and say "Sure."
Then they do everything they can to get around the law. The people take them to court and they lose. So they accept the law of the land.... Nope. They wait 10 years, then just overturn the law.
Citizens got tired of these shenangins so now we get state constitutional amendments.
Please note, while the majority of this particular brand of corruption is currently from the Republicans, it can be found amount De