CLARKSDALE, Mississippi — Rumors of a potential data center had loomed over Voneshay Walker like a cloud for months. She’d heard the whispers and seen reports of other centers popping up in small towns across the South.
She didn’t expect it to hit so close to home.
Walker is a native of Tutwiler, Mississippi, a small town of 2,000. Years ago, she moved to Clarksdale for economic opportunity. Unfortunately, the promise of more jobs, an influx of investment, and food options disappeared. But the city’s latest solution to its problems — a data center — has her troubled.
While there’s currently no agreement in place to build a data center in Clarksdale, the city projects a hyperscale data center could bring in millions in local tax revenue. Such a project could take up to six years to complete, but could create 1,000 temporary jobs and between 200 to 300 permanent positions.
Still, Walker said she’s worried a data center would strain Clarksdale’s water, electricity, add pollution, and further burden a community whose resources are already stretched thin. Moreover, her home is only 3 miles away from the proposed development site, and she’s concerned about the impact it could have on her family, including her children.
“I’m not for it. I’m not against it because everything has its downside,” Walker told Capital B at her home. “But the thing is, you’re taking the risk of your population getting polluted. You’re taking risks — and it’s elderly people who can’t [afford to] move out of Clarksdale.”
In fact, Walker and others like her opposed to the plan are joining a movement of communities who are pushing back through protests, courts, or policy to limit the proliferation of data centers. The pattern is visible from Bessemer, Alabama, to Memphis, Tennessee, and rural South Carolina. In Colleton County, South Carolina, developers moved a sprawling proposed campus toward a Black community after a predominantly white Georgia county rejected a similar project.
Across the South, developers have targeted rural, majority-Black and low-income areas with cheap land, favorable zoning, limited infrastructure, and less political power to resist projects. Roughly 3,000 data centers operate nationwide and an additional 1,000 are in the pipeline. About half of the new construction is concentrated in the South. Increasingly, these projects are negotiated behind closed doors as elected officials have begun signing non-disclosure agreements with tech companies.
Clarksdale’s plan
In March, Clarksdale’s Board of Commissioners rezoned 648 acres from commercial and agricultural to light industrial to make way for economic development, including data centers. But conversations about data centers had been happening since last year, and residents say they found out about the plans just this past spring.
Residents of Clarksdale, a town of about 14,000 people, responded by challenging the ordinance and the city’s decision to move forward with the project despite limited details. It has also divided the city, including the board, where two of the four commissioners did not vote on the ordinance. (On Aug. 26, Capital B submitted a public records request to the city for documents regarding the project.)
In Clarksdale, the proposed development is closest to the Roundyard, a historic Black neighborhood. About 15 residents filed a complaint against the city, alleging the public was not given proper notice of the land’s intended use. They are asking the city to appeal its ordinance and send it back to the planning commission for proper review. (Walker isn’t a part of the lawsuit.)
The city filed a motion to dismiss the claim. The litigation is pending in the Coahoma County Circuit Court.
Stephanie Norris, the attorney for the residents, did not respond to Capital B’s request for comment. La’Toyia Slay, counsel for the city, did not respond. Her firm, Butler Snow LLP, said it will not provide any comments at this time, however.
“Any additional questions on this matter may be referred directly to the City of Clarksdale’s Legal Department,” the firm wrote.
Confusion and mixed messaging
Ever since Walker moved to Clarksdale, she’s heard announcements of new jobs and watched groundbreaking ceremonies for new businesses, but she says the effort has yet to meet the need. Before the pandemic, there were plans to bring a grocer and sports complex to the same area where a data center would be, she pointed out.
But, it didn’t happen.
In the majority-Black city, 55% of the population lives in poverty, more than double the rate in the state and nationwide.
She’s not confident residents here will qualify for data center jobs or the company will stick around long enough to have a lasting impact.
“We got plenty of companies who come to Clarksdale, get their tax cuts, and stay around long enough to get paid back and leave,” she said.
Many cities, including Clarksdale, see data centers as an opportunity for economic revival. Ward 3 Commissioner Eddie Earl said the city is in a financial crisis and in dire need of investment.
Earl, a Clarksdale native, said he understands the frustration over the city’s slow growth, which has pushed many residents to move to larger cities. He said he’s had conversations with potential investors who refused to move forward because of high crime, lack of housing, jobs, youth activities, and other factors.
“Clarksdale has potential, but we have to just take a leap of faith and be receptive to new ideas and a new way of doing things,” he said. “You have to put yourself in a position to attract businesses. That’s all that we did [with the ordinance], as far as putting the city in a position.”
At the center of Clarksdale’s debate, one question remains lingering: What’s the right development for a dying town?
In December 2025, Terry Smith, a local surveyor and engineer, submitted an application to the Clarksdale/Coahoma County Planning Commission to rezone land and add a 25-inch height variance for buildings, but it didn’t mention a data center, according to the court records. Smith represents three landowners: Global Ag Properties II USA LLC, Richard B. Flowers, and Catherine H. and Mason D. Dunn.
According to the complaint, Jon Levingston, executive director of Crossroads Economic Partnership, the local chamber of commerce, spoke to the Planning Commission about the project but did not disclose the intended use because of an NDA.
In a 4 to 2 vote, the commission recommended approval of the application to the city council. The complaint alleges that after the vote, the original application was revised to include the possible construction of the data center.
Walker and other residents took to social media to express their reservations about the proposal and asked for more details. This led to a public forum in March, which hundreds attended.
“You will be voting on zoning changes that could possibly break the generational cycle of poverty that this community has been experiencing for decades,” one resident said. “I think maybe God is finally stepping up and answering the prayer that we have been praying for over 20 years.”
Another countered, “The thing about this data center, you have not one good, positive thing about a data center. Only thing you can hear about a data center is about the money. God, don’t give us nothing that’s going to harm us.”
Most of the speakers staunchly opposed the project.
Despite the public outcry, the ordinance passed on March 23, after commissioners Jimmy Harris and Earl, along with Mayor Orlando Paden, voted yes. Commissioners Ray Sykes and Linda Downing did not show up to vote.
Earl said he initially was against a data center in his ward until he conducted his own research. He spoke to experts and traveled to other operating data centers in Mississippi and Georgia.
His concerns were eased when he learned the proposed data center wouldn’t be like Elon Musk’s xAI in the Memphis area. The NAACP alleges Musk operated turbines without required air permits near Black neighborhoods already facing elevated cancer risk.
“I’m never gonna vote for anything that I feel that will harm the community. I don’t care how much money that it generates,” he added.
Weeks later, a group of Black residents, some of whom spoke at the March public forum, hit the city with a lawsuit, hoping to get clarity. The NAACP — which wrote two letters in support of residents — submitted a public records request, asking for emails, policies, and applications, among other documents. The request was never fulfilled, after the city attempted to charge $50 for inspection of the records, said Abre’ Conner, director of the NAACP’s Center for Environmental and Climate Justice.
“It wasn’t clear that the city commissioners even had enough information to vote at all for a data center,” she said. “One of the most alarming things to us was the policy that they basically returned to us … pointed us to a Facebook link after going back and forth with them.”
Few details still publicly available
Five months later, there are still few details about the proposed center in Clarksdale.
Data center projects across the country impose costs that extend well beyond server warehouses. Their enormous electricity demand is driving new fossil fuel power plants and investment in new transmission lines, often near communities already burdened by pollution.
“What is being offered to these communities is really taking of resources at scale that they’ve never seen before,” Conner said. “We have to be looking at these decisions as one of the civil rights concerns of our time, considering the number of implications that data centers can bring without any consistent promise of a future.”
The financial burden also falls unevenly.
The amount of power needed for data centers is expected to double by 2027 and quadruple by 2035. Utilities and governments are offering major corporations discounted power rates and tax incentives, while households are absorbing grid-expansion costs through rising bills.
Black households, already more likely to face high energy burdens and utility debt, are especially vulnerable. More than 1 in 10 Black households are currently carrying an overdue utility balance. This is three times the rate for white households and double that for Latino households. On average, Black people who are behind in utility bills carry a debt of over $900. The strain is getting worse because of data centers.
However, Clarksdale did put parameters in place for potential developers or companies, according to the ordinance. The entity would be responsible for paying a $5 million impact fee, limiting its water usage, obtaining permits, and creating a 1,000-foot buffer along the boundary.
An official close to the matter, who asked for anonymity, said, “The board never gave up its power.” They approved an ordinance to impose conditions on the front end to benefit the city and reduce environmental impact.
“People think it’s a done deal. It still has to go back before the Planning Commission and board to get built to allow the process to start,” the official said.
If a large-use customer such as a data center comes in, it could result in a 10-fold increase in demand on Clarkdale’s grid, said Curtis Boschert, general manager of Clarksdale Public Utilities, which provides electric and water services for about 6,800 residents.
Any company would have to pay costs to upgrade the utility system, he said.
“Currently what we have, that takes care of our minimum capacity requirements. We can generate up to 30 megawatts, but it’s too expensive to do that for a utility to our size,” Boschert said.
Boschert also addressed concerns around water use.
He believes the current capacity is there; however, he emphasized that a “large load customer would put a big demand on the water system,” and a study would be needed to ensure it doesn’t negatively impact drinking water. The project must comply with federal and state regulations for air, water, and wastewater, he added.
“We wouldn’t extend the credit of Clarksdale Public Utilities or the city of Clarksdale on behalf of new infrastructure that would endanger the fiscal health,” he said. “They’re required to do things, and we are, too. We’re not going to just go out there and throw up some kind of plant.”
Back at her home, Walker still wonders whether city officials will really hold a data center developer accountable.
“When it comes … it’s not gonna help anything,” she said.
Read More on Data Centers:
- A Black DeKalb Community Fought a Massive Data Center for Nearly a Year and Won
- Meta’s $250B Louisiana Data Center Is the Most Expensive in the U.S.
- Data Center Surge Worsens Electricity Costs for Black Families
- Residents Say Musk’s AI Supercomputer Is a ‘Death Sentence’ for Memphis Communities
Staff writer Adam Mahoney contributed to this report.
