As our lives are becoming increasingly more digital — and with the infusion of artificial intelligence — more and more electronic data is being created and consumed.

To feed that growing need, technology companies are building data centers of increasing scale as fast as they can. But some people – particularly residents of rural areas around the country and in Wisconsin – are pushing back on these developments.

“Some of you might feel very victorious tonight — others are feeling a great loss,” said DeForest Village Board President Jane Cahill Wolfgram after a Feb. 3 meeting.

When residents in the DeForest area first heard that a large-scale data center was being planned for farmland just outside their village, they were not happy about it.

“I picked this spot 40 years ago to live because it was so remote,” said Nancy Roth, who lives in the community located just north of Madison.

“I never thought we’d be faced with something like this.”

Roth was one of the local residents who opposed the sprawling 1,600-acre and $12 billion development proposed by technology company QTS Data Centers.

They’ve worried that the data center may damage natural resources and tear apart the tranquility of their rural landscape.

“We want to live in a farming community, not next to a concrete walled data center,” she said.

So, Roth and others went to work. They organized residents, printed yard signs, created an online community and voiced their opposition at numerous town and village board meetings.

“We’re at a point where we can finally make a vote,” Cahill Wolfgram said at the Feb. 3 meeting.

Those opposed to a DeForest data center were able to claim victory when the village board voted unanimously against the QTS plan. With that rejection of the proposal by the village, QTS formally withdrew its application for the project.

This kind of conflict — which hinges on local control of land resources — has been repeating itself around the state. Here’s what happens: A large-scale data center gets proposed, residents get upset and voice their opposition, and then, local officials take notice of the outrage and put an end to the project or the data center company itself decides to pull out.

Other proposed data centers that have been nixed include one for Brown County and another for Racine County. At the same time, the city councils of both Menomonie and Madison have passed restrictions on data centers being built there.

“The data center industry — especially at this scale — it’s new, right, and anytime there’s something of this magnitude that’s new, it’s scary,” said Tricia Braun, who is executive director of the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, which advocates for these developments to boost the state’s economy.

She said an ever-growing need for more information, more entertainment and more innovation — including and especially with the use of artificial intelligence — is what’s driving demand.

“Whether you’re on your phone, you’re live streaming TV, you’re a manufacturer that’s automating your processes, you’re a regular company that just decides to move its server offline or to the cloud — all of that needs to be stored somewhere,” Braun said. “That’s where data centers come in.”

Some large-scale data centers house only one company. That’s the case for a data center being built by Meta in Beaver Dam, as well as for the Microsoft data center complex under construction in Mount Pleasant.

But Braun said smaller and mid-sized companies are clients too.

“Whether it’s insurance companies, financial institutions, just general businesses can be some of these tenants,” she said. “When it comes to something that is changing this fast, and as we’re all doing more with technology every day, the demand has increased.”

According to research from the Brookings Institute, there are more than 5,000 data centers operating in the United States — that’s 10 times more than any other country.

There are around 50 data centers in Wisconsin, at least for now.

But if technology companies get their way, there may be more around the state soon, and some of them will be the hyperscale data centers that span hundreds of acres and cost billions of dollars.

Data center companies find Wisconsin appealing because of available land, energy and a favorably cooler climate. As of February 2026, data centers are being proposed in Rock County, Ozaukee County, Wood County and Kenosha County. And although QTS withdrew its bid for DeForest, the company says they may explore other locations in the state.

“I think digital infrastructure is critical to our economy and critical to national security, and it has to get built somewhere,” said Ryan Hunter, chief operations officer for QTS Data Centers.

State lawmakers are also getting involved in data center regulation.

“We need to be competitive in this space,” said state Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam.

Born represents the south central Wisconsin community where social media company Meta is building a $1 billion, 700,000-square-foot data center.

“This is the future,” he said. “And why shouldn’t Wisconsin communities benefit from some of the economic development for that.”

While he is in favor of these developments, Born also wants to make sure that data centers don’t lead to higher electrical bills for local residents and that the state’s water supply is protected. He’s a lead author of legislation that aims to regulate data centers.

“Ratepayers should be protected. We should be protecting our natural resources. And so those are the two biggest things,” Born said.

State Rep. Angela Stroud, D-Ashland, said the Republican bill doesn’t go far enough. She wants more rules around renewable energy, fees and labor.

“If data center developers can’t meet those requirements, “that means a project may not be well-suited for the state,” Stroud said. “I think we should be willing to admit that and say, fine, then we’re not the place for you. But if we can achieve those things, which we can with smart regulation, we need to get something done.”

Regulation is a sticky topic for data center proponents.

“I think we have to be very careful about what is put into place as far as rules, restrictions, regulations to make sure that those unintended consequences aren’t an overall detriment to future development,” Braun said.

While the future of data centers in Wisconsin remains a case-by-local-case situation, proponents say the need for more computing power and data storage is undeniable. For now, though, it remains an exercise in compromise between data center developers, local residents, municipal government and state lawmakers.