BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM
Monterey Park voted 86 percent to 14 percent last Tuesday to permanently ban data centers from the city. It is the first US city to do it through a ballot initiative.
Campaign organizer Steven Kung called it “a landslide victory.” On the reasons: “The noise pollution, the air pollution, the rise in the electricity rates. The deal just didn’t make sense and it doesn’t make sense for most, if not all, cities data centers go to.”
A blueprint, not just a ban
Mayor Elizabeth Yang told Politico that other cities were next. “A lot of the other cities that are facing data center proposals are going to follow suit,” she said, pointing to protests nationwide and what she called a “bad reputation across the board, across the country, from other data centers that have been built in neighborhoods.”
City councilmember Jose Sanchez was clear about the goal. “We hope that other communities will use the model set by residents here in Monterey Park as inspiration to stop data centers from encroaching in their backyard,” he told The Guardian.
The ballot resolution named air quality, drinking water, public health, and electricity and water rates. None of those concerns are hypothetical: communities near existing data centers have watched utility bills climb as tech companies race to build out the compute infrastructure behind the AI boom.
The numbers behind the backlash
A Public First poll released last week found that 26 percent of Americans support building more data centers, the lowest approval of any nation surveyed. According to The Financial Times, dozens of projects worth at least $156 billion have been blocked or stalled since 2025 due to local opposition.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a bill earlier this year for a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction until safeguards are in place for workers, consumers, communities, and the environment.
Monterey Park now has something the opposition elsewhere has lacked: a finished vote, a decisive margin, and a ballot resolution other cities can study and replicate. The backlash was already underway. Now it has a model.
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