(NEW YORK) -- In the foothills of the Appalachians, where a coal plant once operated, now sits a massive data center operated by Google -- and it's about to get even bigger.
This week the tech giant announced a $1.5 billion expansion of its Jackson County, Alabama site. The company gave ABC News a rare exclusive look inside the campus -- including its high-security server room -- as public backlash grows against the buildout of data centers nationwide.
"There's a lot of negative sentiment," Thomas Gamble, the Southern Corridor Area Manager for Google Data Centers, told ABC News. "As we're building, we're trying to figure out the best, most efficient use of all the power, the water, any of the systems we can."
Gamble, who grew up just five miles from the sprawling campus, said that the company pays for 100% of the power it uses at the facility, where corridors stacked with servers feed global demand for the company's offerings, from maps to email to video streaming.
"We're just a lot of servers storing information, just like books are in your library," Gamble said.
Google is one of several big tech companies that has signed on to a voluntary "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" pushed by the Trump administration that seeks to protect American households from paying more for electricity costs associated with the construction of new data centers.
But the public remains skeptical. A Gallup poll conducted this spring found that 71% of Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their area, citing concerns about quality of life, the economy, local resources, pollution, water usage, electricity bills, and AI in general.
Of the poll respondents who said they would be in favor of a data center in their area, two-thirds cited local economic benefits as the reason.
ABC News has observed this debate play out in contentious town halls across the country, where impassioned residents and local leaders wrestle over the presence of these facilities, which developers say deliver hundreds of jobs and renewed investment in regions that may be otherwise neglected.
Lawmakers in at least 14 states are now considering slowing or banning the development of data centers. Proposed moratoriums in these states all target new facilities, and in some cases, include requirements to study the impacts of data centers.
Opponents of data centers argue that moratoriums will allow additional time to explore their effects on local communities, while proponents argue the moratoriums will hamper AI development and hurt local economies.
The map below shows states that have recently considered moratoriums, and the status of bills that include language on data center development. Click on or scroll over any of the shaded states for details on the bills.
Back in Jackson County, Chamber of Commerce president Rick Roden says Google's data center has made him more excited about the future than he's ever been.
"This changes our history, this changes our future, and we're now known as a technology area," he told ABC News. "We know that that's going to open doors that we would have never had open before, just because we landed Google."
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