Voters in a Southern California city have opened a new front in the growing resistance to the feverish build-out of data centers in California, as early results in Tuesday’s election pointed to an easy win for a measure to permanently ban the facilities.
What happened: Monterey Park, a city of 60,000 people located less than 10 miles from downtown Los Angeles, placed a measure on Tuesday’s ballot asking voters if they wanted to prohibit data centers in their city.
The response, so far, has been an unequivocal “yes,” with 86 percent of votes counted as of Wednesday morning in favor of the proposal.
The text of the measure stated that its aim was to “protect air quality, drinking water resources and public health” and prevent increases to residents’ electricity and water rates. The initiative came in response to community uproar over a now-abandoned proposal to build a data center in the city.
