In a press release<\/a>, Sen. Padilla said data centers should \u201csupport the grid and local communities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCalifornia families are already struggling with rising utility bills as it is, and we need to ensure they aren\u2019t forced to foot the bill for Big Tech data centers,\u201d he said. \u201cEven President Trump agrees, Big Tech needs to \u2018pay their own way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Trump weighed in on growing concerns over data centers on his Truth Social account on Tuesday, saying, \u201cWe are the \u2018HOTTEST\u2019 Country in the World, and Number One in AI. Data Centers are key to that boom, and keeping Americans FREE and SECURE but the big Technology Companies who build them must \u2018pay their own way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s post signals a sharp pivot following his December position on AI proliferation, when his administration issued an executive order<\/a> calling on eliminating \u201ccumbersome regulation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There are at least 23 data centers in the San Diego region, according to a listing<\/a> on the website datacenters.com. Twenty-one are in the city of San Diego, one is in Chula Vista and another is in Tijuana, Mexico.<\/p>\n This week San Diego County supervisors requested a report on the state of data centers in the county with the eventual goal of creating safeguards to protect San Diegan\u2019s from bearing data center costs.<\/p>\n \u201cOur message is simple,\u201d County Supervisor Jim Desmond said. \u201cInnovation is welcome \u2014 but San Diegans should not be left holding the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n Data centers are proliferating because the companies that provide the hardware and software to power the push for AI require complex data management, high security and massive computing power.<\/p>\n But they come at a cost, and communities nationwide are reckoning with the economic, environmental, energy and public health impacts of the large air-conditioned data centers.<\/p>\n Just last Saturday, dozens of residents in an unincorporated part of Imperial County gathered to protest potential noise pollution, public health impacts and higher electric bills that might result from a proposed 950,000-square-foot data center on several parcels of land totaling 75 acres.<\/p>\n The planned center is embroiled in a legal dispute. If built, it would be one of the state\u2019s largest.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to harm us,\u201d said Francisco Leal, a resident of Imperial and a member of NIMBY Imperial, a group of residents opposing the project. \u201cIt\u2019s going to affect and degrade the quality of life of the people that live nearby, and I haven\u2019t mentioned the topic about property value.\u201d<\/p>\n NIMBY Imperial, which organized last week\u2019s protest in El Centro has gathered more than 4,000 signatures against the data center since last December.<\/p>\n The county greenlit the project proposed by Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing in November, saying it was exempt from CEQA. Imperial city officials disputed the claim and sued<\/a>, alleging that some of the parcels would have to be rezoned to allow for a data center. The company responded with a lawsuit of its own<\/a>, claiming that the city is unlawfully obstructing the project.<\/p>\n Sen. Padilla began calling for a greater public review of the data center project in December.<\/p>\n Senate Bill 887 is his attempt to balance industry needs and community concerns about proper oversight and long-term impacts. The bill would require the leading government agency to carry out an environmental review or declare how the project would not impact the environment and surrounding communities. It would provide a path to fast-tracking construction so long as the project meets certain criteria regarding water use, clean energy and infrastructure costs.<\/p>\n The bill does not specify those requirements.<\/p>\n Imperial Valley resident Gilberto Manzanerez, a member of NIMBY Imperial and the founder of Valle Imperial Resiste, a grassroots environmental collective, supports the bills and said that their goals are aligned with community needs.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that this is even moving at the Senate level means there is a true worry about these centers being built as fast as they are,\u201d Manzanerez said. \u201cIt shows a clear contrast to local officials who seemingly are eager to accept these types of projects without any proper protection policies in place.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, though, that legislation can take time, time Imperial residents may not have.<\/p>\n \u201cI worry this will not move fast enough to protect communities like ours.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why this matters Artificial intelligence technology and the rapid expansion of data centers require vast energy and water…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2007,7,9,8,643,12925,84],"class_list":{"0":"post-134956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-imperial-county","14":"tag-san-diego-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/francisco-with-model-data-center.jpg\")
Francisco Leal, a member of NIMBY Imperial, holds a model of a proposed data center that would be build a few feet from his backyard on Jan. 10, 2026. (Philip Salata\/inewsource) <\/p>\n