Public accountability · Citizen action guide
A data centre can require substantial electricity, cooling water, new utility connections and land. A company announcement is a starting point, not proof of what a community will pay or receive. Residents, reporters and elected representatives can start with the documents and questions below.
1. Find the decision makers
Start with your city or county planning office, zoning board, electricity utility, utility regulator, environmental permitting agency and the office responsible for tax incentives. Ask which approvals are pending, which have been granted, and what documents are on the public record.
Ask for a named contact and the date of the next public hearing. Procedures and rights differ by country and jurisdiction.
2. Ask for these eight disclosures
- Electricity: expected peak demand, expected annual use, grid connection, generation source and backup capacity.
- Fuel: natural gas supply, pipeline or LNG dependence, turbine permits, operating hours and emissions.
- Water: source, expected withdrawal and consumption, cooling method, drought or wastewater plans.
- Land: acreage, earlier land use and documented impacts on nearby homes or businesses.
- Public costs: electricity network upgrades, substations, roads and pipes, plus who pays for each.
- Public incentives: grants, tax exemptions, discounted land or electricity, and their conditions.
- Benefits: construction and permanent jobs, wage commitments, local procurement and tax revenue.
- Monitoring: public annual reporting, independent inspections, enforcement and consequences for missed commitments.
3. Request records before decisions are final
Use your jurisdiction's freedom-of-information or public-records process to request planning applications, permits, utility filings, interconnection studies, environmental assessments, water agreements, incentive contracts and meeting minutes. Some material can lawfully remain confidential; ask the authority to explain each claimed exemption and release non-sensitive summaries.
Questions to ask in a public meeting: Will residents' electricity rates rise? How much water will be consumed? Who pays for new power lines? What changes if the operator misses its jobs or environmental commitments? Who measures and publishes the results?
4. Ask for enforceable conditions
Urge decision makers to make approvals and incentives conditional on published resource estimates, annual measured electricity and water reports, public cost allocation, air and noise monitoring, independent verification and corrective action when promises are broken. This is a request for accountable governance, not a claim that every local authority already has these powers.
One concrete model is Pennsylvania's 2026 GRID requirements, which address local approval, affordability, environmental protection, community engagement and transparency. Read the state guidance ↗.
5. Send this request to your representative
I'm asking for public disclosure of the electricity, fuel, water, infrastructure and financial impacts of the proposed data centre in our community. Before any approval or public incentive is granted, please publish the project's expected demand, energy sources, cooling water requirements, utility upgrade costs and who will pay them, anticipated permanent employment, and monitoring arrangements. Please identify which documents are already public, which are missing, and when residents can review and challenge the evidence.
Adjust the request to the project and jurisdiction. Keep correspondence factual, record the responses and share publicly available documents.
6. Help improve the Observatory
Know a disclosed figure, an official filing or a disputed claim we missed? Open the facility in the 8ALTA Observatory and select Submit evidence or dispute this record. Include a link to the underlying document and explain what needs changing. We review evidence before updating a record.
Our dashboard shows what information is recorded in the research dataset, which is not the same as proving an operator refuses disclosure. We distinguish source gaps, documented statements and independently verified operations.