🇩🇰 Danish, 1 November 2026, datacenter secrecy
Small Wisconsin City Scuttles Secretive $1.6bn Datacenter Project
Residents of Menomonie mounted a successful protest against a huge campus proposed by Meta.
The project’s numbers were eye-opening: a 320-acre site that would use an estimated 75,000 gallons of water per day.
Critics say tech giants rely on secrecy through shell companies and NDAs to push through multibillion-dollar mega-projects in cash-strapped cities.
The city government put out a press release about the proposed project in July 2025, but the community backlash that eventually doomed it had already begun.