According to DCD, three people were arrested in Port Washington, Wisconsin, on Tuesday after interrupting a local authority meeting. The meeting was discussing a potential data center project, though not the specific 902MW ‘Lighthouse’ facility planned by Vantage Data Centers. That massive data center is part of the ‘Stargate’ infrastructure project for OpenAI and Oracle. Among those arrested was Christine Le Jeune, a member of the non-profit Great Lakes Neighbors United, who was cut off after exceeding a three-minute public comment limit. Police stated two of the women were arrested because they dropped to the ground and grabbed Le Jeune to prevent her removal after multiple warnings. The council had earlier asked the audience to refrain from interrupting during the public comment portion.
Local Backlash Meets Global Tech
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just a story about a noisy town hall. It’s a collision between hyper-local concerns and the insatiable, global appetite for AI compute power. Port Washington is a small community on Lake Michigan, and now it’s potentially hosting a piece of infrastructure critical to OpenAI and Oracle. The concerns listed—utility rate hikes, construction impact, environmental effects—are the classic NIMBY playbook, but amplified to the nth degree because of the sheer scale and power demand of a modern AI data center. 902 megawatts is a staggering amount of electricity. Basically, it’s enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes. So when locals worry about their bills or their grid, they’re not being irrational.
The PR Battle and Tax Deals
Look at the efforts to manage this. Vantage is throwing around serious commitments: closed-loop cooling, $175 million for local infrastructure, funding biodiversity projects. The Common Council has a whole website of FAQs and fact sheets. But does any of that matter when people are getting dragged out of a meeting? Probably not in the short term. The optics are terrible. And then there’s the financial engine behind it: the approved Tax Incremental District. This is a classic economic development tool where the future increased property taxes from the development are used to pay the developer back for their upfront costs. It’s a subsidy, plain and simple. Supporters see it as an investment; opponents likely see it as a giveaway to a billion-dollar industry. Who’s right? Well, that’s what the shouting is about.
A Wider Pattern of Friction
This incident in Wisconsin isn’t an anomaly. We’re seeing this script play out from Virginia to Ireland. Data centers, especially the power-hungry AI ones, are facing unprecedented local resistance. Communities are now acutely aware of the water use, the power draw, the transformer explosions, and the sheer physical footprint. The arrests, captured on video, will become a rallying cry. It transforms abstract policy debates into a very human story of protest and authority. For companies like Vantage, it’s a brutal reminder that securing a zoning permit is one thing, but securing a “social license to operate” is another battle entirely. And it’s often a lot messier.
What Happens Next
So where does this leave the project? It still needs various approvals, but the key TIF victory in November shows the official momentum is with Vantage. However, political and community sentiment can shift fast. Continued protests, legal challenges, and heightened media scrutiny could slow things down or force even more concessions. For the tech industry, it’s another data point in the growing cost of AI—not just in dollars for chips, but in social friction and infrastructure strain. These aren’t just server farms anymore; they’re the industrial power plants of the digital age, requiring the robust and reliable hardware that powers modern manufacturing. And as demand grows, finding communities willing to host them is only going to get harder.
