Data centers have dominated headlines and social feeds lately. In a four-part series, WVXU is delving into some of the issues surrounding them. In Trenton in Butler County, officials are ushering in a large-scale data center that promises jobs and economic development. But, some residents aren’t sold, saying a lack of transparency is leaving them in the dark.
Lorie Blankenship has lived in Trenton since the 1970s. The antique seller and her husband have a ranch house with tall trees in the front yard. The elementary school she walked to every morning as a kid is still around the corner. Down the road, farmland owned by the same family for more than a century continues to grow crops today.
Blankenship says the city of about 15,000 has changed in some ways over the years.
“When we moved here, it probably had about half the population, but it still — no matter when it grew — it kept that same small-town atmosphere,” Blankenship told WVXU.
Now, she’s worried a new neighbor less than a mile from her house could hurt her quiet hometown.
Under construction
Diggers move dirt and dump trucks drive into a fenced construction site on 140 acres in the industrial park on the southern edge of Trenton. The former farmland is being prepared for a nearly 1-million-square-foot data center by California-based developer, Prologis.
The city agreed to sell the land to the developer in spring 2024. But Blankenship and most residents didn’t find out until the sale closed a year later, in fall 2025.
“We immediately went, ‘What?,’ and then we started looking back through things, trying to get people involved,” Blankenship said. “November is when they had a city council meeting. A lot of people came to the city council meeting, and they were questioning the data center, and that's when the transparency issues came up.”
People worried the city was keeping the project a secret. They raised concerns about water use, environmental impacts, noise and light because neither the city or developer had revealed specific plans or studies at that point.
Business as usual or backdoor deal?
In communities with data centers, residents have reported negative impacts from constant humming noises to air pollution from diesel backup generators to strain on local water systems.
Trenton City Manager Marcos Nichols says the city anticipated the data center, with its high-power computers and constantly-running cooling systems, would operate differently from the traditional industrial developments in town.
That’s why Council voted to create an I-T zoning district in November 2025.
“The building is further back from the property line, as well as has an 8-foot berm, and then there has to be trees on the on the berm to allow for light, noise, sound, all of that to be buffered by those things,” Nichols said.
In the months since, the city has reviewed and approved site plans to ensure the data center complies with building codes. The water department has confirmed it has capacity for the project. The city has also passed a resolution freezing water rate increases for residents through 2032, citing revenue from the data center development.
Prologis has said it would pay for its water use, electricity costs and power system upgrades. It estimates the project will create more than 100 full-time jobs.
The city expects the data center’s end user to be Amazon Web Services.
Blankenship says she’s still not convinced the data center is a good deal. Learning a city official signed a non-disclosure agreement for the project only adds to her concerns about transparency, especially since she says she had to file a Court of Claims complaint to obtain the document from the city.
“Now nobody has any faith in their own government,” Blankenship said. “People go and they vote for people and they expect that they're going to represent them, and then they feel that backdoor deals have been done.”
City Manager Nichols says with projects like these, there’s a fine line between openness and staying competitive.
“If they put out that they're coming to town six months ahead of time, a year ahead of time, what does that mean from a competition standpoint? Does that mean that someone else is going to come in and try and get land and move through the processes faster than them and get built faster? It's a balance,” Nichols said.
A statewide debate
This debate about transparency in data center development is playing out around the state.
Molly Bryden is with the nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization Policy Matters Ohio. She says the pace of data center expansion is making it hard for communities to keep up with new developments. There are more than 200 existing and proposed data centers in Ohio.
“At the same time, we don't have strong enough reporting requirements at the state level, where we would have a centralized database or clearinghouse for information about planned projects,” Bryden said. “There's kind of a patchwork approach developing where communities might hear some murmurs about a potential project, and then they have to start making public records requests, digging through public documents available on their like local government's website.”
Some bills have been introduced in the Ohio Statehouse to address transparency, like one that would limit NDAs between certain local government officials and developers.
To increase openness locally, Bryden recommends people talk with their neighbors and ask questions.
“[Get] people out to public meetings to share their concerns and just have that conversation with their elected officials to help them better understand what the community's real concerns are,” Bryden said.
That's what Lorie Blankenship says she's trying to do with a group she helps organize. It's called Woodsdale and Trenton Environmental Resistance, after the community — her community — where the data center is being built.
They continue to push back on the Prologis project. At the same time, they're getting an early start demanding transparency from the city about its plans to annex 600 acres for another data center.
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