Trenton Voters Approve Charter Amendment Banning Large Data Centers

Voters in Trenton, Ohio, have overwhelmingly approved a charter amendment that prohibits the development of large-scale data centers within city limits, marking a significant victory for grassroots opponents of the rapid proliferation of hyperscale computing facilities across the United States. Unofficial results from the Butler County Board of Elections show Issue 17 passed with 80% of the vote, a margin that underscores the depth of local opposition to projects that residents say impose unsustainable burdens on electricity and water resources.

The charter amendment was proposed by a group of neighbors, including Barry Blankenship, a leader of the Woodsdale and Trenton Environmental Resistance group, who gathered signatures to place the measure on the ballot. Blankenship said the scale of support reflects growing national opposition to data centers over their massive electricity and water demands. "We're just another statistic that proves the citizens do not want them, even though city governments and these big businesses want to come into these little communities and roll over us, thinking we're just going to sit back and take it," Blankenship said. He described the outcome as "a sigh of relief," adding: "It's like when people go to bed tonight, they can actually sleep."

The measure's passage means developers looking to bring data centers to Trenton will need to keep projects under 25 megawatts, effectively blocking plans for the city to annex land for a 1,000-megawatt Amazon data center and casting uncertainty over the future of a 250-megawatt facility currently under construction by Prologis in the city's industrial park. The vote represents a direct rebuke to those projects and to the economic incentives that city officials had promoted alongside them.

Issue 17 faced organized opposition from a group funded by outside interests, including the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and Prologis. The Trenton Community Alliance canvassed neighborhoods, distributed yard signs and ran advertisements against the ban, arguing that it would limit economic opportunities for the city. Trenton officials had said building the data centers would provide a host of financial benefits for residents, including a one-year elimination of the city's general fund property tax, a 30% discount on YMCA memberships and millions of dollars for Edgewood City Schools. Supporters of the ban, however, celebrated at Barn N Bunk Farm Market, eating a cake with blue lettering reading "vote yes on Issue 17" as a musician plucked out folk protest songs on his guitar.

The Trenton vote is part of a broader wave of local resistance to data center development across Ohio and the nation. Seventeen other communities in Ohio also voted on data center-related ballot measures on Tuesday — the most of any state in the country — signaling that concerns over power consumption, water use and local land impacts are becoming a potent political force. For the data center industry, the outcome in Trenton illustrates the growing difficulty of siting large facilities in communities that once welcomed them, and the risks that developers and utilities face as they race to expand capacity to meet demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence workloads. The ban also raises questions about how states and municipalities will balance the economic benefits of data center investment against the infrastructure and environmental costs that residents increasingly refuse to absorb.