Transcription
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Back here in Wisconsin, I drove across the state this week. And just north of Milwaukee, you quickly enter an agricultural area: cornfields, rolling hills, barns and grain elevators. Then suddenly, on the side of a highway, you feel a visual shock.
And… oh, Henry, is that the data center on the left?
HENRY LARSON, BYLINE: It’s huge.
PFEIFFER: There’s something huge under construction there.
It is a large-scale data center located in Port Washington, Wisconsin. I went there with NPR producer Henry Larson, and we could barely find words to describe how massive this project is.
This skyline of cranes and…
It spans 2 miles of highway. It covers 2 1/2 million square feet of former farmland.
LARSON: It’s literally over the horizon.
PFEIFFER: This emerging data center complex has destroyed the land and destroyed this community. It’s a local story playing out nationally as artificial intelligence companies rush to build data centers to power their AI and many people are increasingly saying we don’t want it here.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Would you recognize the mental health impacts on residents living closest to the data center? Will you offer support to the people who have endured the most?
PFEIFFER: The gargantuan Port Washington project has led to angry protests, multiple lawsuits and the arrest of opponents for civil disobedience. Supporters say data centers will keep the United States competitive and could bring great wealth to the places where they are built. But many residents feel scared and helpless in the face of this rapid change, like 67-year-old Amanda Mueller. She moved to Port Washington five years ago.
AMANDA MUELLER: It was my last gesture. I feel like an elephant looking for a place to die in life and I found utopia. It was so perfect.
PFEIFFER: She bought a four-bedroom ranch just steps from a beautiful, undeveloped beach on Lake Michigan.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS ON GRASS)
PFEIFFER: Is this your entire garden that you see here, all of this?
MUELLER: Yeah. I own…
PFEIFFER: Wow.
MUELLER: …Three acres.
PFEIFFER: Until this fringe of…
MUELLER: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: …Pines.
MUELLER: Oh, all the way.
PFEIFFER: Wow.
MUELLER: It’s the ideal retirement home. I mean…
PFEIFFER: Look at this vision you have.
But his perspective is different this year. We can see cranes in the distance. The Port Washington data center is under construction about a half-mile from his house.
When did you feel like something was about to change dramatically in your neighborhood?
MUELLER: I’m going to say two years ago. The farmer right next to me just sold a lot of his farmland. And then someone else said, yes, another farmer is selling. And it’s like, wait, it’s all consolidated.
PFEIFFER: Did you feel a sort of mixture of dread and dismay?
MUELLER: I put my house up for sale.
PFEIFFER: Literally?
MUELLER: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: But she says she only received one offer that ended up falling through. She thinks the buyer was scared off by the data center. Mueller is furious with the mayor and city council for approving this project. She is now a leading advocate for the policy in Port Washington, opposing lawsuits and calling for moratoriums, environmental reviews and greater voter participation.
MUELLER: There should be a buffer zone around data centers, and it should be at least a mile from a data center, no residents should live near it. There must be safeguards.
PFEIFFER: Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke says adequate guardrails are in place. There is perhaps no greater advocate for this project than the mayor.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOORS CLOSING)
TED NEITZKE: I don’t know where you want me to start, but… so I’m 55 years old. So I lived here, I went to high school here, I married my wife, who’s from here, our kids went to school here.
PFEIFFER: He shows us around Port Washington, remembering when it was a declining industrial town that didn’t yet have a nice tourist downtown. He thinks people who oppose the data center have it all wrong, just as they were wrong about a popular brewery now located near the town’s pretty marina.
NEITZKE: So this is one of the new developments. This is where we’ll go for beer and cheese curds. But this building was very controversial. People lost their jobs on their local council because it was a parking lot, and no one wanted to lose that parking lot. Change doesn’t come easy in small Midwestern towns.
PFEIFFER: In Port Washington, being mayor is a part-time job. He pays an annual stipend of $7,500. But that role gave Neitzke the authority to help approve that $15 billion data center project. He envisions thousands of local jobs, beautification and infrastructure projects and a burst of new tax revenue.
NEITZKE: One of the things I did was fly to Loudoun County, Virginia, and tour all the data centers…
PFEIFFER: One of the epicenters…
NEITZKE: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: …Data centers.
NEITZKE: I mean, I don’t know if you can find more in the United States. And while I was driving, I really didn’t understand: why are people so crazy? Because when you’re in that area and you’re driving around, it’s just big boxes full of computers.
PFEIFFER: But you really can’t imagine why people would be mad?
NEITZKE: Honestly, if you did your due diligence, I don’t understand why a community like ours, which grew up on an industrial basis, would struggle with the fact that we would need this again.
PFEIFFER: The mayor leads us to the data center site, and as we get closer, he acknowledges that the scale and pace of the work is staggering.
When you look at all this, what emotions do you feel?
NEITZKE: The pride and the angst – that excites me because I know that this just locks in the future of our children, of employment, at least for the next 50 to 75 years. I know our city’s finances will depend on it. And the anxiety is that it’s insane.
(SOUNDBITE OF TURN SIGNAL CLICK)
NEITZKE: I mean, it’s so big.
PFEIFFER: When we arrive, an entourage of company representatives and public relations executives hand us safety helmets and fluorescent vests…
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh, there you are. Hey, (inaudible). How are you doing?
NEITZKE: Oh, I have to get my gear.
PFEIFFER: …And we get into a big van.
(SOUNDBITE OF VAN DOOR CLOSING)
UNIDENTIFIED TOUR GUIDE: Building 12 is 540,000 square feet and Building 11 is 725,000 square feet.
PFEIFFER: The complex is all dirt, steel, construction workers and truck convoys.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEP)
PFEIFFER: We stop in front of what looks like a windowless gray warehouse.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT IN OPERATION)
PFEIFFER: And that will be the data center itself containing computing equipment.
VICTORIA TYSON-BLOYD: Yes, ma’am. You have just arrived at what would be a loading dock, but yes. Each of these bays is different and there are different walls that protect different areas. But that’s right, each of them will be a data center.
PFEIFFER: This is Victoria Tyson-Bloyd. She oversees this construction for Vantage data centers.
TYSON-BLOYD: All of that infrastructure is what supports the cooling, the heating, the power and the fiber, which are your communications connections to each of these buildings. This is what we are building.
PFEIFFER: This complex is part of a program called Stargate that President Trump announced at the White House last year. Its goal is to create a national network of advanced AI data centers. The Port Washington complex is a partnership with Oracle and OpenAI. We asked how long the contract would last.
TYSON-BLOYD: How long does our company think about (inaudible)…
(SOUNDBITE OF CLANG METAL)
TYSON-BLOYD: …Is it over? I don’t know.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Yeah.
TYSON-BLOYD: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Yes, we won’t be able to disclose that.
TYSON-BLOYD: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: You know, but you can’t say it?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: So…
PFEIFFER: You know, but you can’t say it?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: It’s a condition of the contract. We – yeah.
TYSON-BLOYD: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: We have a lease.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEEP)
PFEIFFER: This vagueness worries the public, and data center operators have often resorted to nondisclosure agreements to keep their projects secret from the early stages. Meanwhile, people like Amanda Mueller are watching the future being built close to home, using technology that its own creators say could one day kill us.
Every time there’s a new technological advancement, whether it’s railroads or cell towers or – you choose – it creates a period of discomfort where the rails have to be laid and the towers are suddenly stuck there in a once pretty neighborhood. What do you think makes this technological development different from that of the past?
MUELLER: We don’t know what it’s for. I mean, with these things, we knew. We were carrying cargo. We were moving people. We were moving, you know, producing. We don’t know what the end goal is.
PFEIFFER: Amanda Mueller and Mayor Neitzke agree on this.
You are very encouraging. You are very persuasive about the benefits this could bring in the future. So why do you think polls show that two-thirds of Americans are opposed to data centers?
NEITZKE: Because no one knows what they’re doing.
PFEIFFER: Which is part of the problem, right?
NEITZKE: Well, that’s a huge problem.
PFEIFFER: They’re afraid of what might happen.
NEITZKE: It’s a huge problem. And the reason no one knows what they’re doing is because they’ve been able to act without having to ask – to tell anyone what they’re doing. And as a result, this little mystery has created a huge gap in knowledge, which has led to a lot of ignorance.
PFEIFFER: Mayor Neitzke admits he doesn’t really have control over how AI will be used. But the part of the world he can control is this: in the streets where he grew up, in the city he believes will thrive on data center money. So he asks: if you were in his place, what would you do?
(SOUNDBITE OF YUSSEF DAYES’ “RUST”)
Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit the terms of use and permissions pages on our website at www.npr.org for more information.
The accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. The text of the transcript may be edited to correct errors or match updates to the audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio recording.
Gn headline
