How a small Wisconsin city scuttled a secretive $1.6bn datacenter project

Residents of Menomonie mounted a successful protest against a huge campus in the city as national resistance to the AI boom grows

In the spring of 2025, Sydney Brennan was riding high. The 22-year-old was finishing college and was a newly elected councilwoman in Menomonie, a city of about 17,000 in the lush plains of north-western Wisconsin.

Weeks into the new job, she was invited to a meeting with consultants pitching a $1.6bn AI hyperscale datacenter campus that an undisclosed big tech company wanted to build just outside of town. The project’s numbers were eye-opening: a 320-acre site that would use an estimated 75,000 gallons of water per day, making it the most significant development in Menomonie’s nearly 150-year history.