Massive data center projects are sprouting like weeds in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas with breathless promises of more energy for artificial intelligence (AI) training, potential jobs, and local booming economies.

Big Tech is throwing tens of billions of dollars into futuristic superstructures in their pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI) as the market demands. Executives from Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Blackstone Inc. joined President Donald Trump and Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., at Carnegie Mellon University on Tuesday to boast of $36 billion in data center projects and $56 billion in new energy projects across 20 organizations.

A day earlier, Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed his company will spend hundreds of billions of dollars on building huge AI data centers in the U.S., including the first multi-gigawatt data center, called Prometheus, expected to come online in Ohio in 2026, as well as Hyperion, a data center nearly the size of Manhattan in Louisiana.

Not to be left out, OpenAI is constructing a data center in Texas with its own natural gas plant, estimated at $60 billion, that is bigger than New York’s Central Park.

Meanwhile, a study released Wednesday by design-build firm Clayco found 73% of U.S. adults would support the construction of a new data center within 20 miles of their home if it brings jobs, infrastructure investment, and tax revenue to the area.

It all sounds like a win-win for everyone. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, argue tech experts and environmentalists, who cringe at the notion of a select few companies controlling the AI infrastructure and creating an emerging digital divide between regions (U.S., China, the European Union) with the computing power for erecting leading-edge AI systems and everyone else. The three regions host more than half of the world’s most-powerful data centers, according to Oxford University researchers.

For the past decade, the Chinese government has pushed companies within the country to build manufacturing capabilities in high-tech industries for which it previously depended on imports. In April, Beijing said it would allocate $8.5 billion for AI startups.

Conversely, India has at least five AI computing hubs and Japan has four. South America and Africa have almost none, and more than 150 countries have none, based on Oxford data.

Consequently, the concentration of AI computing hubs in the U.S. comes with considerable baggage.

Critics of Big Tech point to the spasm of outsized data center buildouts as the latest example of Big Tech’s hyperscale AI ambitions that are increasingly running up against local infrastructure constraints with concentrated builds, overwhelming power demands, and growing public scrutiny.

The explosion of data centers near existing energy-producing facilities has led to turf battles over hallowed grounds and genuine distrust of water quality, to cite two recent examples.

In Manassas, Va., where the Union army lost the Civil War’s first major land battle in 1861, environmentalists and history buffs are waging a war of their own in opposition to the Prince William Digital Gateway complex, a data center campus in the narrow corridor between the western border of Manassas National Battlefield Park and Conway Robinson State Forest.

They warn the 37-building complex threatens resources including water, energy and land. Some experts foresee a “growing crisis” for residents and future generations.

“We are not anti-development,” David Duncan, a native Virginian and president of the American Battlefield Trust, which is suing to stop construction of the complex, told the BBC. “We believe this should be an and conversation. That’s what has been lost in this rush to build these types of facilities too close to our historic resources.”

Down in Mansfield, Ga., residents in the shadow of a construction site for a Meta data center fear a tainted water supply.

Beverly Morris believes the construction of the center disrupted her private well, causing an excessive build-up of sediment. The retiree now lugs water in buckets to flush her toilet.

“I can’t live in my home with half of my home functioning and no water,” Morris told the BBC. “I can’t drink the water.”

“I’m afraid to drink the water, but I still cook with it, and brush my teeth with it,” she added. “Am I worried about it? Yes.”