On New Carlisle\u2019s one main drag and inside the few remaining farmhouses near the megaproject, Amazon\u2019s arrival has few full-throated cheerleaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt isn\u2019t our little town anymore,\u201d said Judy Myer, who still tends to goats, donkeys and a mule at her home of 60 years while the super-sized data centers rise near her.<\/p>\n
MLive visited the community less than 10 minutes from the Michigan state line as the Great Lakes State stares down its own wave of massive data center projects<\/a>. It has none like Amazon\u2019s \u201cProject Rainier\u201d site \u2014 part of a new generation of large-scale data centers built for AI \u2014 yet. <\/p>\n Interviews with more than 20 New Carlisle-area residents, business owners and officials offer its northern neighbors a glimpse at what life could be when Big Tech comes to town.<\/p>\n More than anything, residents reported inconvenience tied to the yearslong construction project of epic proportions \u2013 snarled traffic, accidents, noise and road construction.<\/p>\n But at the same time, locals struggle to see the immediate benefits of the $11 billion project displacing the farmland they love, pitched as the largest in Indiana\u2019s history and a boon to their community. While some businesses benefit, other storefronts remain empty. Few around town can name a friend or acquaintance who works at Amazon.<\/p>\n Given the traffic headaches, years of construction and loss of beloved farmland, many residents in New Carlisle told MLive they aren\u2019t convinced the sacrifices are worth it.<\/p>\n Others say it\u2019s far too early to make final judgments about the data centers, which will ultimately demand as much electricity<\/a> as 1.5 million households and millions of gallons of water. Only portions of them are now actually up and running. <\/p>\n AWS pledges to be a good neighbor, touting job growth and economic contributions from its project as well as new tax revenue eventually flowing to schools and social services.<\/p>\n It points to the key role data centers play underpinning technologies we use every day, from streaming Netflix shows to online banking.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout them, the Internet as we know it wouldn\u2019t exist,\u201d said Josh Sallabedra, cluster leader for data center operations at AWS, in a statement. <\/p>\n But New Carlisle residents fear their town won\u2019t continue to live up to its roadside billing for the next generation with the project. As relative guinea pigs in America\u2019s large-scale data center boom, they\u2019re anxious.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all very precarious where we feel like it\u2019s this balancing act to try to incorporate some new business and industry,\u201d said Marcy Kauffman, a retired school teacher who grew up in New Carlisle and now serves as town president. <\/p>\n To her, New Carlisle is \u201cMayberry-like.\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t want to compromise the very reason why you love this quality of life here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Army of construction workers comes to town. \u2018Nobody was ready for it\u2019<\/p>\n At 6 a.m. every morning, half asleep with a doughnut in hand, Dan Caruso used to breeze through the half-hour drive from his home in New Carlisle to his job as a mail carrier in Mishawaka, a city on the other side of nearby South Bend. <\/p>\n He\u2019s retired now, but those days might be gone for another reason.<\/p>\n New Carlisle, with a population of about 2,000 \u2014 small enough that town residents must drop by the post office to pick up their mail \u2014 now sees an influx of two to three times that number of construction workers flood into the area each day. <\/p>\n Amazon has four construction firms working simultaneously on its data centers. Sprawling parking lots fill up daily with cars and trucks with license plates from as far away as Texas and Florida.<\/p>\n At the same time, General Motors is working with Samsung SDI to build a hulking electric vehicle battery plant<\/a> next to the data centers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just too much at once, and we weren\u2019t ready for it. Nobody was ready for it,\u201d said Caruso.<\/p>\n Mention the data center, and traffic is frequently the first word from New Carlisle residents\u2019 lips. Some worry about their safety while chatting with neighbors in the street or going to get their mail. Others have changed their commute or even gone so far as to cut Indiana State Road 2, running south of town and into South Bend, from their travel plans entirely.<\/p>\n The local school district had to reroute buses to avoid dangerous left turns crossing the highway, meaning it takes longer for students to get to school, according to Paul White, superintendent of the New Prairie United School Corporation.<\/p>\n AWS agreed to pony up $120,000 for extra police patrols. Amid mounting complaints and severe accidents<\/a>, the money lasted less than half the time expected<\/a>. A major $50-million road project is in the works to ease safety concerns, with Amazon putting in $7 million, but it won\u2019t be finished until 2027.<\/p>\n In the meantime, the local fire chief, Joshua Schweizer, reports his department\u2019s call volume is up 33%, a chunk of it traffic accidents. <\/p>\n New Carlisle firefighters have responded to everything from an arc flash explosion that resulted in two workers being airlifted to minor sprained ankles, according to the chief.<\/p>\n Those who have visited the construction site compare it to the runway at Chicago\u2019s O\u2019Hare Airport, a hive of activity.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has all been at lightning speed. Remember about two years ago, at this point, those were still farm fields,\u201d Schweizer said. His department is looking to build a new fire station.<\/p>\n It also hired a full-time fire marshal to keep up with inspections at the data centers. Amazon is about 80% of the marshal\u2019s workload.<\/p>\n The fire chief knows construction is temporary but plans for additional data centers on the AWS campus keep coming. In his view, support is not.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re constantly asking them for additional resources, and quite honestly we\u2019ve gotten none of it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe would like to see that partnership, but to this point, we have not.\u201d<\/p>\n An Amazon community fund has awarded the fire department $10,000 for two AED stations, and it is slated to receive more than $500,000 \u201cthroughout the construction lifecycle\u201d to offset the impact of the project through a development agreement with the county, said Sallabedra, with AWS.<\/p>\n But Schweizer says that\u2019s barely enough to cover the fire marshal\u2019s salary, let alone the millions involved in purchasing a new fire engine or planning a new station. And his department has so far seen none of that money, which is distributed at the discretion of a county commission. <\/p>\n \u201cDeals are negotiated without any input from the people who will have to protect these structures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Michigan might soon see something similar. <\/p>\n On farmland outside Ann Arbor, crews are clearing land for a data center for ChatGPT creator OpenAI and cloud computing giant Oracle<\/a>, which blazed through the approval process last year.<\/p>\n State officials anticipate the \u201cStargate\u201d project will require its own army of construction workers, bringing with it 2,500 jobs as it gets built. The traffic complaints have already begun.<\/a><\/p>\n Pace of growth has some residents worried<\/p>\n The AWS project is being built on about 1,200 acres east of New Carlisle long targeted by county officials for industrial development and already home to a steel facility and power plant.<\/p>\n Why are new AI centers looking to join them?<\/p>\n New Carlisle has long thrived as a way point, first in the 1830s as part of the Michigan Road, one of Indiana\u2019s earliest byways, and later along rail lines. Now, major electric transmission lines crisscross the area as they loop under Lake Michigan. <\/p>\n Data centers see a path to power, but Caruso sees an unchecked appetite for resources.<\/p>\n From his Jeep, he points out the server facilities that were completed first, nondescript gray-blue rectangles fenced off from the road. It\u2019s impossible to see all the data centers from the ground. It takes some 15 minutes to drive around them all.<\/p>\n About eight years ago, he joined a group of local environmentalists, farmers and residents pushing back on the county\u2019s efforts to bring industry to the area, known as the Indiana Enterprise Center.<\/p>\n At the time, he was in the minority in the group, believing his town needed some sort of growth. \u201cThe next generation of farmer isn\u2019t coming along. The kids are all leaving,\u201d he said. \u201cThey see what their parents and their grandparents went through, and how they\u2019ve just always been dirt-covered farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI said if we don\u2019t do something, this is going to be a ghost town. There will be nothing here,\u201d Caruso remembered.<\/p>\n Now, he apologizes to his friends who warned development, once begun, would only continue to spread. <\/p>\n Initial plans for the AWS data centers showed some 16 buildings, Caruso said, but the company is now aiming for more than 30, each about 200,000 square feet. He\u2019s led campaigns to protect wetlands in its path and emerged as critic of the project.<\/p>\n \u201cI was for some of this growth, certainly not what\u2019s happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Neighbors lament loss for \u2018rural sanctuary\u2019<\/p>\n Courtney Nichols likes that she can let her dogs out without worrying they might bark.<\/p>\n She moved to a rural road surrounded by farm fields a few miles outside New Carlisle for the space and quiet. For the past year, she\u2019s instead tolerated the hum of heavy machinery. A few football fields away are the data centers.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re trying to float in the pool and all you hear is beep, beep, beep, constant trucks backing up. That\u2019s a little annoying,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Still, she\u2019s adapting to the construction. Lights from the project shine on her home at night, she said, but thankfully her bedroom doesn\u2019t face the data centers.<\/p>\n As a real estate agent, she knew some kind of industrial project was possible when she bought her home a few years ago. The long-term plan isn\u2019t to stick around but rather move to Florida once she and her husband retire.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel bad for the people, like the farmers who this is their family land, people who this was going to be their retirement sanctuary,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Myer has lived a few minutes away for some 60 years. She and her husband built the house on land farmed by his family, though he\u2019s since died, leaving her alone.<\/p>\n Ask the 78-year-old how it\u2019s been lately, and she makes a retching sound. \u201cIt\u2019s horrible, it really is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She used to see a car every two or three hours on the road outside her house, but last summer, sitting out on her rocker, Myer came to expect a stream of vehicles every half hour.<\/p>\n While workers are given strict instructions on the building site, she says there aren\u2019t enough police officers to tamp down speeding and reckless driving when they leave.<\/p>\n An intersection with stop signs near her home is being converted to a roundabout. She\u2019ll lose some land, though she\u2019s negotiating to save a 100-year-old pine tree and have her granary rebuilt elsewhere on the property.<\/p>\n Other landmarks are long gone, like a house on the corner owned by a Polish family where Myer and her family would go to get eggs.<\/p>\n \u201cThey would roll over in their graves if they knew what was happening to their farm, but their grandchildren, they\u2019re not interested in farming. They\u2019re not farmers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Sallabedra, with AWS, said local governments determine \u201cland-use compatibility.\u201d<\/p>\n AWS meets all local noise regulations and operates its facilities in accordance with federal guidance for health and welfare of surrounding communities, he said, working to incorporate setbacks, landscaping and design features to minimize impacts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also work hard to ensure our data centers do not negatively impact our neighbors during construction and once we\u2019re operational,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Myer understands why others have sold family land for the project, but it doesn\u2019t make the change any easier. She feels like moving is out of the question \u2013 she needs a spot to keep her goats and other animals. She\u2019s not willing to take on new debt at her age.<\/p>\n \u201cI doubt that I\u2019ll ever live to see the end of this construction,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Despite protections, residents anxious about power and water<\/p>\n As the data centers are built, worries about power and water use are also simmering in New Carlisle, echoing concerns across the country.<\/p>\n The plentiful aquifer in the area is attractive to data centers that draw from it to cool computer equipment, but many residents worry it could be over-taxed.<\/p>\n \u201cI can buy a generator for my house. I can\u2019t sink a well deep enough to get water if these guys drain it all,\u201d said Caruso.<\/p>\n In the early stages of construction, when crews were pumping water from the ground to make way for infrastructure, a handful of residents near the data centers reported well troubles<\/a>, though state officials later said the construction was not to blame<\/a>.<\/p>\n As the data centers transition to regular operations, AWS seeks to soothe the water worries.<\/p>\n It reports its data centers will use outside air for cooling about 98% of the year and completely between October and April. Water will be drawn only on the hottest days, amounting to 18 million gallons a year for the entire project, said Sallabedra. <\/p>\n That\u2019s about equal to 162 Indiana households and less than a typical golf course, he said.<\/p>\n The Town of New Carlisle\u2019s system is providing that water, and Kauffman, the town president, said officials are confident the system can handle it. A county agreement limits water use in the development area to about half of what the aquifer can safely provide.<\/p>\n Electricity is another story. Like many large-scale data centers focused on AI, the AWS project will suck power on massive scale, some 2.2 gigawatts, helping more than double utility<\/a> Indiana Michigan Power\u2019s peak demand by 2030. The utility suggested the site to Amazon in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the largest I\u2019ve heard of in Indiana by far,\u201d said Ben Inskeep, program director with Citizens Action Coalition, an Indiana consumer and environmental advocacy group active in utility regulatory proceedings.<\/p>\n That comes with big costs \u2013 new power plants, lines and substations \u2013 and worries existing ratepayers could share the burden. <\/p>\n The utility, often abbreviated I&M, points to a 2024 settlement<\/a> offering protections like minimum billing for the data center, longer contract terms and exit fees requiring it to pay if it decides to reduce power demand or shut down.<\/p>\n Since, Michigan utilities have struck similar arrangements<\/a> to serve data centers.<\/p>\n Advocates hailed the deal as a \u201clandmark\u201d step, but Inskeep says its effectiveness will need to be evaluated over the coming years. He\u2019s worried residential customers will share the cost of pricey transmission grid upgrades and power generation, increasingly expensive as demand grows.<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/M3WSD4MDUNH3DPAMRWNMFZ23PU.JPG\")
Downtown New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. Joel Bissell | MLive.com<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/BYFB22DUHVFCRLPNYXGHD22A7E.JPG\")
The Indiana State Road 2 and Strawberry Road intersection dividing two sites of Amazon Web Services’ Project Rainier spanning 1,200 acres in New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. The $11 billion-dollar project is one of the world’s largest AI compute clusters with Anthropic AI models using custom Trainium 2 chips, eventually drawing over 2.2 gigawatts of power. Anthropic is using Project Rainier to build and deploy its AI model, Claude. Joel Bissell | MLive.com<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2VATKDZO6JEWLINYHP25GOUNIE.JPG\")
An aerial image showing one of one of the operational sites of Amazon Web Services’ Project Rainier spanning 1,200 acres in New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. The $11 billion-dollar project is one of the world’s largest AI compute clusters with Anthropic AI models using custom Trainium 2 chips, eventually drawing over 2.2 gigawatts of power. Anthropic is using Project Rainier to build and deploy its AI model, Claude.Joel Bissell | MLive.com<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ZIENEEUNGZEWHBD7OPWL4V7TQQ.jpg\")
Retired mail carrier Dan Caruso stands outside his home in New Carlisle, Ind. on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, showcasing signs he had printed to oppose further data center development in the area. Outside New Carlisle, Amazon Web Services is building more than 30 artificial intelligence data centers on roughly 1,200 acres.Lucas Smolcic Larson| MLive.com<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/PFYQCPRRLNHC7LFVEPAWNVDNSU.jpg\")
Courtney Nichols looks out her back window over her pool at construction on Amazon Web Services data centers being built near her home outside New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.Lucas Smolcic Larson| MLive.com<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4OLIGSYOX5HMLB5TDGMYNM4TJM.jpg\")
Barns stand on Judy Myers’ property outside New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. Nearby, massive Amazon Web Services data centers and an electric vehicle battery plant are being built, and a road project will occupy some of Myers’ land.Lucas Smolcic Larson| MLive.com<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/XMJ4ZHL4ABA6VEEWIAJIU244CE.JPG\")
\u201cWelcome to New Carlisle, Indiana\u2014 A nice place to visit, a great place to live\u201d heading into New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. Joel Bissell | MLive.com<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/AOFL22XIUBGRNDGQLUXU547EFM.JPG\")
A pickup truck attempts to go around road closed sign near one of two operational sites of Amazon Web Services’ Project Rainier spanning 1,200 acres in New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. The $11 billion-dollar project is one of the world’s largest AI compute clusters with Anthropic AI models using custom Trainium2 chips, eventually drawing over 2.2 gigawatts of power. Anthropic is using Project Rainier to build and deploy its AI model, Claude.Joel Bissell | MLive.com<\/p>\n
![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/NKF4JSOJWRDMVHRL4J76MOLIIU.JPG\")
An aerial image showing two farm houses near one of one of two operational sites of Amazon Web Services’ Project Rainier spanning 1,200 acres in New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. The $11 billion-dollar project is one of the world’s largest AI compute clusters with Anthropic AI models using custom Trainium2 chips, eventually drawing over 2.2 gigawatts of power. Anthropic is using Project Rainier to build and deploy its AI model, Claude. Joel Bissell | MLive.comOn the cutting edge of the data center boom, uncertainty rules the day<\/p>\n![\"Indiana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/N24WBBZJK5GCPDN6E7ZERG5CWQ.JPG\")
An aerial image of downtown New Carlisle, Ind. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. In the background by the rising steam, is Amazon Web Services’ Project Rainier spanning 1,200 acres. The $11 billion-dollar project is one of the world’s largest AI compute clusters with Anthropic AI models using custom Trainium 2 chips, eventually drawing over 2.2 gigawatts of power.Joel Bissell | MLive.com<\/p>\n