Sunday Pick: The Data Center Next Door with Dr. Jacoby Wilson | from TED Tech

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
Happy Sunday, y'all, Elise Hu here. Today, we're bringing you a Sunday Pick, where we share an episode of another podcast from TED, handpicked by us for you.
Imagine if one day, your quiet neighborhood came alive with a steady hum, and it never went away. All throughout the US., data centers are popping up next door and in your backyards, and these buildings guzzle millions of gallons of water, cause noise pollution that doesn't stop, and are raising homeowners' utility bills. Today, I'm sharing a special episode from the TED Tech podcast, the first of a four-part series happening on TED Tech, where host Sherrell Dorsey talks with scientists, organizers and local leaders to uncover what AI's infrastructure is really doing to our water, our power grid, and the people who are already living with the consequences. In this episode, you'll hear from environmental health scientist, Dr. Jacoby Wilson, on what happens when data centers infiltrate a neighborhood. They discuss why data centers disproportionately undermine working class communities, and how Dr. Wilson is developing ordinances to better regulate data centers and hold planning commissions more accountable. You can hear the other episodes of this series on data centers, on TED Tech, wherever you get your podcasts. Or at podcasts.ted.com.
Now on to the episode after a short break.

**Sherrell Dorsey** (1:40)
Somewhere in your city, or maybe just outside of it, there's a building you've probably never thought about. No windows, no sign, and inside, no people, no traces of life.
The cloud isn't just an intangible product of the digital age. In fact, the cloud has an address, which means it has neighbors, and it's time we meet them.
This is TED Tech, a podcast from TED. I'm your host, Sherrell Dorsey. We talk a lot about AI here on TED Tech, but this month we're looking at the physical house AI lives in, the data center. Data centers have been around as long as the internet itself, but they've never garnered this much attention or this much controversy. We've seen the headlines. Your neighborhood data center will impact your electric grid, your water system, your utility bill. And yet, with the rise of AI, this is what it takes to maintain the technology that has made an irreversible impact on the way we live and work, even as the cost gets heavier and heavier. This is a story about AI infrastructure, but really, it's a story about who decides the price of innovation and who ends up paying it.
This month, TED Tech is traveling across the country to learn about what's happening on the ground as data centers expand, entering more communities. We'll look at power literally and figuratively. What happens when electric grids can't keep up? What can communities do about a crisis they didn't create? We'll also hear about potential solutions and explore what those possibilities can look like. Let's get into it.
Prince George's County, Maryland. Majority Black. One of the wealthiest Black communities in the country. Tree-lined streets, good schools, people who built something here and have been fighting to protect it. On the edge of the Beltway, there's an empty lot where a mall used to be, 90 acres. The county approved plans to turn it into a massive data center complex without community input. So residents pushed back. A petition gathered more than 22,500 signatures. Dozens rallied out the site. County Executive Aisha Braveboy convened a task force. That task force published its findings in November 2025
Residents said it buried the real story, the air quality, the water, the energy costs, the civil rights implications. So they wrote their own report titled The People's Report. The site's fate is still unresolved.
The activism on display from PG County residents reminds me of a TED Talk from environmental activist, Peggy Shepard. Peggy is co-founder and executive director of the not-for-profit We Act for Environmental Justice. She's seen stories like this unfold time and time again in communities of color across the country.

**Peggy Shepard** (5:39)
It should be no surprise that every community should have a right to a clean environment. Yet some are sacrifice zones. Sacrifice zones, communities living on the front lines of pollution and environmental hazards. Now, this is a story about communities in crisis. Mostly, these are communities of black and brown and indigenous peoples. It's often a story of low-income communities. But race, race is the decisive factor. Now, studies show that an average middle-income black family with an $87,500 income is likely to live with more pollution than a white family making $22,500 a year.
Now, my organization, We Act for Environmental Justice, works within a movement of hundreds of environmental justice groups here and abroad to address the disproportionate impact of pollution borne by our communities.