The fight over AI data centers has moved from planning offices to packed council chambers on two continents. In Minnesota, protesters shut down two council meetings before the town of Hermantown approved a 1.7 million square foot Google data center late on Friday night. In Australia, the body representing all 79 local councils in Victoria voted to demand a halt on new data center approvals. Both votes came in the final days of October 2026.
What happened in Hermantown?
Hermantown, a small city next to Duluth, had been expected to give the Google project final local approval on Monday, October 26. Protesters chanted for two hours until the council postponed. A second attempt the next evening was shut down too, and the meeting was moved to Friday. There, the council approved a development agreement, a special use permit and a decommissioning plan for the site, more than 200 acres in a rural part of the city.
Google had already made concessions to get there. It dropped a request for up to 80 million dollars in tax breaks, shrank the facility, added a well-monitoring programme, promised a quieter campus, and agreed to pay to take the site down if it ever closes, which local reporting described as a first for the company. Opponents argued the changes were the minimum needed. The project is not finished: several lawsuits are pending, and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission still has to approve the power supply deal, with a vote expected next year.
What happened in Victoria, Australia?
The Municipal Association of Victoria, which represents all 79 councils in the state, backed a resolution calling for a moratorium on new or expanded data centers until a full planning and environmental framework is in place. Councils including Melton, which had called for its own local moratorium in August, brought motions to the meeting. A key complaint is that a state fast-track scheme lets large projects bypass local councils.
The vote comes despite new state rules announced in September that already ban data centers from residential zones, require a 150 metre buffer from homes, and make operators supply their own renewable power and avoid drinking water for cooling. Councils say that is not enough. Victoria goes to a state election on November 28, which keeps the issue hot.
Why is the backlash growing now?
Scale. A single modern AI campus can draw as much power as a small city and use large amounts of water for cooling, while employing relatively few people once built. Residents see higher power bills, noise, lost farmland and strain on water supplies, and get little say when projects are fast-tracked. An Investigate Europe report this week also documented poor safety and unpaid wages for construction workers at data center sites in eight European countries.
It is the same tension behind Loudoun County turning on data centers, Texas pausing grid approvals and the debate over how much water AI uses. The industry needs land, power and water faster than local communities are willing to give them. Expect more fights like Hermantown, more conditions like decommissioning bonds, and more votes on pauses, especially in places with elections coming.
