Michigan Data Center Press Conference: "Regulate First, Build Later"
Ypsilanti Township, MI
Michelle Deatrick, Chair of the DNC Council on the Environment and Climate Crisis and a Washtenaw County farmer, spoke at a press conference in Ypsilanti Township on October 1, raising concerns about a proposed data center planned jointly by the University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Deatrick brought to the podium a policy principle the Council has championed nationally: that communities need enforceable standards for data centers' energy, water, and environmental impacts before construction begins, not after.
The press conference, held at the Marriott Eagle Crest ahead of the second University-hosted town hall on the project, was organized by local residents and brought together elected officials, organizers, and labor leaders raising questions about the facility's scope and siting.
Deatrick drew on more than a year spent visiting communities across 15 states confronting the rapid growth of AI data centers — from Loudoun County, Virginia, to Corpus Christi, Texas, to a small town in northern Louisiana living with a Meta facility's traffic and dust — to walk Ypsilanti Township residents through what an unregulated build could mean locally.
She challenged several of the University's public claims about the project: at 100–110 megawatts, she said, the facility is more than twice the industry's hyperscale threshold, drawing power equivalent to roughly 80,000 homes — which she argued makes the University's "zero-emissions" framing misleading once the electricity needed to run it is accounted for. She also pointed to the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority's April 2026 moratorium on new water and sewer commitments to data centers, which as written covers the project's estimated 500,000-gallons-a-day draw.
"Every community has to be able to say no to a data center, and that no has to be respected," Deatrick said, calling on the University to "back off, back down, and take this project where it's wanted — if it's wanted anywhere."
Read and listen to WEMU's coverage of the town hall, which includes audio of Deatrick's remarks.
