Sarah: The AI buildout has arrived at the part where water, wires, and money all get a veto.
Matt: On The Data Center Daily: California communities are hitting the brakes in a matter of days, while the grid’s backup plan is stuck in line.
Matt: First up: Visalia. Tap follow so the next episode finds you.
Sarah: Here's SJV Water:
Quote: Proposals for two “mini” AI data centers on the fairgrounds in Tulare and Kings counties recently generated a firestorm of questions and
Quote: angry comments.
Quote: They are far from approval, but residents fear the notorious power and water guzzling centers will drain already stressed water supplies.
Quote: Whether they would depends on a lot of factors, including the size and type of data center.
Matt: “Mini” is a pretty convenient label here.
Matt: SJV Water puts typical use at 18.6 acre-feet a year for every megawatt
Matt: in a valley where farmers already have to meter and pay for groundwater.
Sarah: The disclosure gap is still wide open: Newsom vetoed a statewide reporting bill last year, while AB 2469 and AB 2619 take another run at it.
Sarah: Aaron Fukuda’s point is pretty plain: account for the pumping, formally or otherwise.
Matt: Tulare County considers a 45-day emergency ordinance tomorrow, Aug.
Matt: 18. These fairgrounds proposals are still far from approval
Matt: but residents are putting a clock on permitting before somebody treats stressed groundwater like free cooling inventory.
Sarah: From Bloomberg:
Quote: Demand for batteries has skyrocketed as electricity use across the US swells
Quote: driven by data centers’ booming energy needs and increasing electrification.
Quote: It’s also getting harder to get them connected to power grids.
Quote: Falling prices have made batteries more attractive.
Quote: But after decades of stagnant investment
Quote: grids are racing to make the upgrades needed to plug them in
Quote: straining supplies of transformers
Quote: circuit breakers and other equipment.
Matt: Seven hundred fifty gigawatts of storage is sitting in interconnection lines.
Matt: That’s the backup fleet everyone points to when they say data-center load can be managed—and it waits a median five years to plug in.
Sarah: That’s roughly the capacity of more than 700 nuclear reactors queued for connection.
Sarah: Not every project survives the queue, but a five-year median, up from 18 months in 2015, is a structural failure—not a busy inbox.
Matt: Battery prices fell.
Matt: The transformers, circuit breakers, and grid upgrades still didn’t arrive.
Matt: We’ve built a waiting room for the equipment meant to keep the system from falling over.
Sarah: Con Edison says its battery queue grew 300% in two years.
Sarah: Utilities are being asked to accommodate new large loads while the balancing assets face the same connection bottleneck.
Sarah: Very efficient, if your goal is paperwork.
Sarah: Saeed Azhar and Tatiana Bautzer at Reuters have the details.
Matt: Reuters says banks are now treating water use, noise, power-bill anger, and local opposition as credit risk.
Matt: Good. A stalled permit costs money before anybody pours a yard of concrete.
Sarah: Bank of America’s infrastructure chief defines project readiness as permits, approvals, and community support.
Sarah: So “ready to build” now comes with a few decidedly less glamorous requirements than a GPU purchase order.
Matt: And after that Valley water story, lenders don’t treat community support as some soft survey score.
Matt: It can decide whether a lender funds a construction schedule—or gets stuck financing a very expensive argument.
Sarah: Capital is still chasing the buildout.
Sarah: Reuters says loan committees are now asking whether a project stays buildable once the ribbon-cutting deck is over.
Sarah: Here's San José Spotlight:
Quote: As San Jose hammers out local review standards for data center projects
Quote: some residents are calling for the city to follow the lead of other jurisdictions and enact an immediate moratorium on new developments.
Sarah: San Jose has 20 operating data centers, six under construction, and five seeking approvals.
Sarah: Its standards package doesn’t reach council until December
Sarah: so Green Foothills says developers have every incentive to get grandfathered in first.
Matt: Of course they do.
Matt: With rules on water, power, noise, air quality, and public outreach all arriving in December, the rush is to file before December.
Matt: That’s a permitting loophole with a calendar attached.
Sarah: And Equinix’s site at 123 Great Oaks Boulevard is right in the middle of the debate.
Sarah: Community acceptance is now on the city-council agenda, not just a line in a site-selection spreadsheet.
Matt: San Jose officials can call the approval timeline protracted
Matt: but residents are looking at Oakley and New York’s moratoriums and asking why applicants get to sprint through this gap.
Matt: After the lender piece, that fight goes straight into underwriting.
Host: If you follow The Data Center Daily, check out AI Daily Briefing: top AI news for engineers, founders, and investors every weekday.
Host: It breaks down real capabilities versus demo hype, fast.
Host: Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Host: We’re watching San Jose’s data-center standards package, expected to go before the City Council in December.
Host: Links to every story are in the show notes, so take a look at the ones that caught your attention.
Host: Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back tomorrow.
Host: That’s The Data Center Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.