Justin Pearson, a Democrat running for Congress in Tennessee, and Erin Brockovich, the longtime consumer activist, had a message for communities fighting against data center construction: Keep at it.
Mr. Pearson, who is currently a state representative in Tennessee, drew attention to the health effects of air pollution from data centers, citing estimates that additional pollution from gas turbines and diesel generators could kill dozens of people each year.
“It’s killing people in communities now,” he said. He also accused Elon Musk of illegally installing natural gas turbines near his community in Memphis.
The sites near his district have drawn scrutiny since the N.A.A.C.P. sued Mr. Musk’s xAI in June, saying that the company has been operating natural gas turbines without the proper permits.
Mr. Pearson, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, is currently campaigning to represent Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District.
Ms. Brockovich, an environmental activist whose work inspired the 2000 movie “Erin Brockovich,” said she hears from data center employees that the companies they work for are operating without permits. Citing leaks from data center operations in Wyoming and New Jersey, she said she was concerned about the pace of construction, and she criticized the secrecy of deals with local governments.
“You see it coming. So why would we jeopardize that?” she said. Ms. Brockovich recently started a data center mapping project to crowdsource new developments nationwide.
Public opposition to data centers has rapidly gained momentum in recent months amid concerns about the rising costs of electricity, skepticism about the societal benefits of A.I. and anxieties about their environmental effects. New York became the first state to enact a yearlong moratorium on new construction in July, and the issue has become a point of contention in the upcoming midterm elections.
Mr. Pearson repeated calls for a national moratorium on data center construction. “If these things were so good, they would be being built at Mar-a-Lago,” he said.
“It’s the billionaires versus the rest of us,” Mr. Pearson said.
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