When organizers in Citrus County, Florida, scheduled a town hall to challenge a proposed data center industrial park, they had no clear sense of whether the effort would draw much interest.
It did: roughly 200 neighbors showed up, an unusually large crowd for a rural county, and a sign that resistance to new data centers is building far beyond major cities.
What happened?
According to the News Tribune, the fight in Citrus County centers on a proposal to expand an industrial park in Holder to 1,356 acres for prospective data centers, a plan residents came to discuss at a May gathering in a historic schoolhouse in Hernando.
For organizers, the turnout marked a major turning point after weeks of outreach on Facebook and Nextdoor, through petitions, and by canvassing neighborhoods…