In rural Alabama, voters feel sold out to massive data centers: ’Slap in the face’

John Urquhart had grandchildren in mind when he bought 230 acres in a small neighborhood in rural Alabama.Urquhart still works, but his wife, Gina, retired from the nearby veterans’ hospital in Montgomery. They built a barndominium, stocked ponds with bass and bream, marked out a field for dove hunting and left space next door for their daughter to construct her own house. Driving along his property line as a neighbor baled hay, Urquhart mused about teaching his grandsons to plant grain or raise calves.“This property was going to be my legacy to them,” he said, “and now there’s this monstrosity that could be going up a hundred yards away.”John Urquhart points at a large number of birds in a lake on his property in Hayneville, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comHe’s talking about plans for a massive data center next door to the 54-home neighborhood where he lives in Lowndes County. The $1.5 billion project has grown to 1,050 acres, or about 750 football fields.Project Red Clay, organized by the speculative company Cloverleaf, is one of about a dozen proposed data center sites across Alabama, where local communities have limited ability to stop the projects.Your browser does not support the HTML video element.A drone shot shows, highlighted in red, the approximate location of Project Red Clay – a proposed 1,050-acre data center in Lowndes County, Ala., July 30, 2026. The $1.5 billion data center would be located right next to residential areas in Hayneville, Ala. (Eric Kiekeben/AL.com)This spring, residents in Hayneville, a town of about 700, across Lowndes County, organized to fight back against the data center. They made yard signs and printed T-shirts that say 45Strong, a reference to the county car tag. They have questions about power bills, water usage, wastewater management, noise and construction.A "Save our Land" sign is seen in Lowndes County, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. Many properties in the area had these planted in their yards, with a QR code linking to a website with more information about a proposed data center. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comAnd they say they are mad enough to make their voice heard in one of the country’s most essential elections.Ann Burgwin Faulkner, who has lived in Lowndes her whole life and is now raising children there, said she usually votes Republican.“I cannot fathom voting Republican in the next election,” she told AL.com. “I want to vote for people who are showing up in our communities, who are listening to what we have to say. And when you hear about the issues we’re dealing with and say our concerns don’t matter, that’s a slap in the face.”National importanceLowndes County, home to just 9,500 people west of Montgomery, is now part of a congressional district that could help decide which party controls Congress.Marchers cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge ahead of a journey to recreate the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march on Saturday, May 16, 2026. They said Republican-led efforts to change Alabama congressional districts would dilute Black voting power. Will McLelland/AL.comThe county has long been represented by a Democrat and daughter of the Black Belt, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell. But earlier this year, Republicans, hoping to increase their numbers in Washington, redrew the maps and moved Lowndes County into a new congressional district, one that’s now considered up for grabs.U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat, is counting on votes from Lowndes County to hold his seat. Republicans will choose their nominee in a special primary on Tuesday.Rep. Shomari Figures watches as Rep. Terri Sewell speaks at a town hall meeting in at Beulah Primititve Baptist Church in Hope Hull, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. "You want to be able to pass on [your homes] to the next generation, and you don't want to pass [them] on polluted," Sewell said regarding nearby data center construction. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comUrquhart said he has voted Republican for a long time, but is upset with how his party, including U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville and President Donald Trump, have talked about data centers.“I’ll be voting for Shomari,” Urquhart said. “It just lends the question: Who’s been bought and paid for, and you know, how do you beat it?” he said.This summer, Tuberville, the Republican nominee for governor, said he supported data center development in Alabama, though he has also said companies should pay their own way. He called concerns about environmental damage “bullcrap” and suggested opposition to development was being promoted by China.“We’re told if you don’t get behind this development, you’re in league with a Chinese communist,” said Adrian Johnson, a local judge who lives near the proposed site. “Well, I haven’t seen any communists in Lowndes County, and I haven’t seen Tommy Tuberville either.”John Urquhart, left, and Adrian Johnson chat in Johnson's yard in Hayneville, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. Urquhart said that community efforts against data centers have brought him and his neighbors closer together. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comOther politicians are weighing in. State Rep. Rhett Marques, who is running to be the Republican to represent Lowndes County in Congress, said he supports a pledge from President Donald Trump to control costs of data center development. And he said communities should be able to decide if they get a data center, though he did not specify how to give them more control in those discussions.“There are plenty of places in Alabama for a data center,” Marques told AL.com in a statement. “It should be up to the local counties and municipalities.”Lowndes County has a long history in the fight for voting rights. Black people who tried to vote faced brutal and deadly force during the Jim Crow era. In 1965, on the march from Selma to Montgomery, hundreds slept in a field on Robert Gardner’s farm. The data center would be half a mile from that farm down U.S. Highway 80.Perman Hardy sits near the front of a recent town hall meeting with a "NO DATA CENTER" sticker on her shirt in Hope Hull, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. Hardy has spent decades helping Lowndes County residents vote and trying to fix the area's wastewater issues. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comAnd Lowndes has received international attention for its ongoing sanitation and wastewater crisis that sometimes leaves raw sewage running through yards. Back in 2017, a United Nations official toured the area, saying conditions resembled third world countries and should be addressed.Today, Lowndes finds itself at the center of the fight over data centers in Alabama. Perman Hardy, a former sharecropper and community leader who has worked on voting rights and the persistent wastewater issues, said issues in Lowndes County often come down to one thing: Racism and neglect dating back to Jim Crow.“These are all the same issues,” she said.Last week, Figures and Sewell spoke at a church worship center packed with people, many wearing “Save Lowndes County” stickers. Sewell has sponsored a national data center moratorium bill in Congress. She and Figures said they are not anti-technology, but want to make sure that progress doesn’t come at the expense of local communities.“My question is, do the people of Lowndes County want this specific project?” Figures asked.“No,” the crowd shouted.“Then I’m with the people,” Figures said.Local questionsJohnson lives down the street from the Urquharts. His backyard holds a small garden and a pair of dogs, named Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, joined sometimes by a black cat, Ella Langley.Looking out from his back fence and across a neighbor’s field, he can see the proposed build site. The land is currently dotted with cattle, hackberry bushes and Osage apple trees.A drone shot shows the close proximity of residential property to land being used for the Project Red Clay data center in Hayneville, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. The forested land on the horizon has already been contracted to be used for the project, and it lies about a half mile away from the back treeline of the homes seen. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comJohnson said he has asked the company and local commissioners to give him more details about what might be moving in next door. But he has so far been unsatisfied.“There’s just zero transparency,” Johnson told AL.com. “If they give you information, they’ll give you three or four different stories.”Tom Ellis, a local business owner and a volunteer member of the Lowndes County Economic Development Commission, said he first heard about the development in January. At that point, the company already had a parcel and project in mind, he said.“Cloverleaf, as a company, has been extremely transparent,” Ellis said. “They have tried to inform the community. But when you think about information and transparency, the only way it can be shared is if there’s two parties that are in conversation and they’re listening.”“Most of the facts of this project have fallen on deaf ears,” he said.A spokesperson for Cloverleaf said the project expects to use up to 1,500 megawatts of energy provided by Alabama Power, about enough to power 1 million homes. It could use 100,000 gallons of water per day from the Pintlala Water System, though the company said it anticipates average daily water usage to be significantly lower.Jim Byard, with the county commission, said he has not yet received any requests to give the project tax abatements or other incentives.A mid-construction Meta AI data center is seen near I-65 in Montgomery, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. This Meta Data Center campus will be 1.3 million square feet and cost $1.5 billion. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comIn a statement, the Cloverleaf spokesperson said the company plans to be a “strong economic partner” in Lowndes County and will ensure the project “generates meaningful direct revenue for the community’s schools, emergency services and infrastructure.”Just up the road, a Meta hyperscale data center in Montgomery County is already under construction, with dozens of trucks going in and out. The project, 1,500 acres, is larger than the Lowndes County project. Alabama Power is building solar fields in east and south Alabama to support the project.“It just lends the question: Who’s been bought and paid for, and you know, how do you beat it?”John UrquhartLowndes County residents watched the Meta project go up. They ask: Why can’t the Cloverleaf project sit next to that, or over in Fort Deposit, where there is already industrial development? Why can’t they get more details from the company about an end user? The company and supporters, like Ellis, can provide some answers, but residents have more.“Data center developments are different than any other kind of development,” said Ryan Anderson, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Even in early stages, developers need to be prepared to answer questions about water usage, wastewater infrastructure, power, and where the power is coming from. They need to be able to answer specific questions about bumpers and noise controls because these are all things that, as we’ve seen in other parts of the country, have a really severe impact on people’s lives.”Residents attend a town hall hosted by U.S. Reps. Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures in Hope Hull, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. A variety of issues were discussed at the meeting, including the Lowndes County data center. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comIn reality, though, like many places in the state that lack planning and zoning rules, there is nothing the people of Lowndes can do to stop a project. Cloverleaf or another company could theoretically begin building the data center in the county tomorrow.“If you’re in an unincorporated area, people can pretty much build what they want as long as it’s up to code,” said Charles Miller, with the Alabama Riverkeepers Alliance, which has begun assisting the neighborhood next to the site. “People who live in rural areas want to be able to do things like, you know, raise chickens in your backyard or goats or something like that. But at the same time,” he added, “it also means there’s nobody who can stop your neighbor from doing whatever they want with their property, including selling it at a highly inflated price to a data center developer.”Gina Urquhart glances out into her property, soon to be near the Project Red Clay data center, in Hayneville, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. Her and her husband, John Urquhart, bought this property originally because they sought land and privacy. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comStatewide changes to zoning or water or electricity use would need to come from the legislature, Miller said. Alabama is in a “uniquely bad” position with water use regulations, he said. “We don’t have any rules regarding how much water someone can withdraw. It’s a free for all.”What’s next for Lowndes County? Some say they’d be open to development if they could get more answers. Lowndes County has few jobs. It has no hospital and one small grocery store. New revenue could pay for better roads, or a water treatment facility.“We all recognize the fact that you know we need to have economic development,” Johnson said. “We need our community to grow.”“But if we’re getting a business like the one that is being proposed here, a data center that doesn’t bring any of those positive things, it is going to have an adverse impact. It’s going to continue to drive people out of our community.”From left, Tom Gardner, pastor of Beulah Primitive Baptist Church, shakes hands with Apostle Joe Neal Mallory after the town hall meeting ended in Hope Hull, Ala., Thursday, July 30, 2026. Eric Kiekeben/AL.comJohnson said it’s important to push for answers and to ask the company to adjust plans now.“If we wait until it’s already built, it’s already generating noise, it’s already generating heat, it’s adversely impacting the water supply, it’s adversely impacting the power grid, it’s hard to backtrack. We are trying to prevent it from ever getting to that point.”Tom Gardner, who lives in the neighborhood and serves as a pastor to a local church, said he is not convinced by the company’s explanations about water, power or noise. He said he built his forever home in the community, but has medical conditions and doesn’t want to live next to a facility that is loud.“We feel like they’re trying to snoop in at night and do something,” Gardner said. “I know I’d have to move if they come in.”