Louisville Congressman Morgan McGarvey said he unequivocally opposes the building of massive data centers in the city and state. Comparing the tech companies hoping to profit from the centers to extractive coal companies, Kentucky’s only Democratic federal representative said residents should control what gets put into their community.
He pointed explicitly to the proposed hyperscale data center planned in west Louisville — a 1.6-million-square-foot facility that has already received approval from the Louisville Planning Commission. McGarvey spoke at a public forum organized by Louisville’s Democratic state lawmakers at the South Central Regional Library Wednesday evening.
“Maybe they think they can get away with it because it's on Camp Ground Road, where the median income is $28,000,” McGarvey said. “You think they get away with that in Prospect or Indian Hills? Well, we can't let them get away with it here either.”
Both Congress and the Kentucky General Assembly have so far failed to pass legislation that would provide regulations or consumer protections specific to data centers. In Kentucky, proposals for massive facilities have sprung up in urban and rural counties after lawmakers passed new tax incentives for data centers in 2025, expanding incentives that previously only applied to Jefferson County.
While proponents of the hyperscale data centers promote the property taxes they’ll bring to local communities, opponents argue the environmental costs and potential impact on utility ratepayers outweigh benefits. Without adequate protections, advocates fear the enormous cost of building out new electric generation capacity will get passed onto the community instead of the profiting data centers.
“I am done with out-of-state corporations coming into our state, our home, our community, and using our resources, wasting and exploiting our people for their gain,” McGarvey said.
Audrey Ernstberger with the Kentucky Resource Council called the hyperscale centers “guzzlers” of both electricity and water. Ernstberger also questioned some of the estimates companies provide on added jobs and tax revenue.
“What we see is that most hyperscale facilities are actually running on a few permanent employees, and often it's contract security and maintenance work that's happening,” Ernstberger said. “The Louisville project is claiming about $68 million a year in this generated revenue, but again, those are the developers' estimates.”
Poe Industries LLC and PowerHouse Data Centers, the developers of the Camp Ground Road data center, did not immediately return a request for comment.
After the forum, Karen Hagan, who is a member of the grassroots No Data Center 502 group, told Kentucky Public Radio she is frustrated by the lack of movement both at the state level and in Louisville Metro Council to pause data center development. The council has tabled votes on a proposed moratorium. Mayor Craig Greenberg’s administration proposed data center regulations are in the public comment phase until Friday.
Hagan said she wants officials who say they are opposed to data centers to do something about it, more than making stump speeches. She said they should be calling up the local developer, Steve Poe, who has deep political ties in the state and city.
“It is a local person who they know, and they could put pressure on him,” Hagan said. “I want to know why they're not doing that.”
Democratic state lawmakers in attendance at the Wednesday forum pointed to their own legislative efforts to rein in data centers, none of which passed during the session. One bipartisan bill led by Republican Rep. Josh Bray of Mount Vernon that would have put up guardrails to ensure utility ratepayers don’t bear the cost of data centers ultimately failed to pass the finish line.
Many attendees and lawmakers also decried attempts to keep data center projects hidden from public sight via non-disclosure agreements and secret deals. Sen. Keturah Herron, a Louisville Democrat, filed a bill earlier this year that would prohibit public agencies from entering such NDAs and require some information about data center proposals be shared publicly. It did not get a committee hearing.
Herron said that while the city works to understand data centers and their impacts, Louisville should put in place a moratorium.
“Right now we don't know enough information,” Herron said. “I think that when you think about technology, it's constantly moving, and so I wonder if whatever we build and create today, if it's going to be useful for us in two years.”
Rep. Lisa Willner of Louisville has previously tried to pass legislation that would keep utility companies from shutting off utilities during extreme weather, to no avail. She said the same lobbyists that oppose that legislation are fighting data center regulations.
“This is a very powerful lobby with a lot of money, with a lot of resources, and these are going to be the same lobbyists, the same powerful entities we're going to be up against with the too fast embracing of these data centers that we don't yet know enough about,” Willner said. “So we've got some work to do.”
McGarvey sent a letter to LG&E President John Crockett III, opposing the Camp Ground Road data center and asking costs not be passed onto ratepayers. He asked numerous questions, including who will pay for the upgrades and whether residential customers face higher risks of outages.
“We must not require working families, seniors, and small businesses, all of whom are already stretching every dollar to get by in President Trump’s economy, to pay for the costs of bringing this much power online,” McGarvey wrote.
