Black Communities Across the US Refuse to Be Sacrifice Zones for Data Centers

Originally published by Capital B .

When word spread through Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year that a tech giant was eyeing hundreds of pine-covered acres at the city’s edge, Benard Simelton’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The longtime NAACP leader had fielded calls about toxic air and shuttered steel mills before, but this, he said, was new to him.

At first, the renderings looked like progress for the majority-Black town: glass-and-concrete buildings promising jobs, innovation, and a future rooted in Big Tech. But the fine print told a different story : a complex that would level 700 acres of forest, swallow nearly 2 million gallons of water a day, and draw enough electricity to power a city the size of Seattle .

What officials pitched as transformation began to feel, to Sime