Ohio Residents Push Constitutional Amendment to Block Large Data Centers Statewide

Eight days. That’s all it took for a handful of Adams and Brown county residents to gather roughly 1,800 signatures on a petition most people assumed had no meaningful path forward. And on Tuesday, they bravely walked those signatures into the Ohio attorney general’s office. That submission launched a process that could place a constitutional amendment before Ohio voters this November — one that would effectively ban most large data centers from being built anywhere in the state.

The people who made that happen are not career activists or funded advocacy groups. They are rural Ohioans who watched a multi-billion dollar industry descend on unzoned land in their communities and decided, when their local governments either could not or would not act, to go around them entirely.

Especially concerning, is that multiple former power plant sites have been in talks for development. In conversations with Adams County resident Danielle Kinhalt, the former Killen Power Plant site is also a primary target despite its proximity to a well-documented cancer cluster. The concern here to anyone paying attention is obvious: construction could disturb whatever toxic legacy remains in the soil. And all of it is happening without direct input from county residents.

“What it feels like they are doing is just taking advantage of the unzoned rural areas of Ohio, where they can go ahead and put in whatever they want.”

Nikki Gerber, Adams County resident and petition organizer

The proposed constitutional amendment would add language to the Ohio Constitution prohibiting the construction of data centers exceeding 25 megawatts. That threshold is not arbitrary, because according to reporting on the proposal, a 25-megawatt cap would effectively block most modern data centers from operating in Ohio. The amendment is not targeting legacy infrastructure. Instead, it is targeting the scale of facilities being proposed right now, in counties where residents say they were never asked.

In Adams County, the flash point is a proposed data center near the former Stuart power plant. Obtained through a FOIA request by WCPO 9’s I-Team, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for the Buck Canyon site in February, despite residents still circulating petitions at the West Union Walmart. The proposed project, backed by a company called 68 Yards LLC, would require clearing roughly 320 acres of forested habitat, impact three wetland areas, and consume power on a scale that dwarfs the county itself. A regulatory filing from AES Ohio disclosed that a data center in the vicinity of the Stuart plant would require 1,300 megawatts of electricity by 2032 — 31 times Adams County’s total annual power consumption.

In Brown County, the catalyst was a proposed data center at the Mount Orab mega site — a more than 1,000-acre development that drew hundreds of residents to a middle school gymnasium in late February to say they did not want it. A city council member subsequently introduced a measure to pause data center development for 180 days.

These communities are not outliers. Across Ohio, township trustees, county commissioners, and state legislators are fielding constituent pressure that has no recent precedent. Jerome Township, outside Columbus, became the first local government in the state to impose a moratorium on data centers in September 2024. Lordstown, Washington Township, and others followed. Ohio Democrats introduced a slate of bills in February targeting the approval process, tax exemptions, and local authority to reject projects. A report from Innovation Ohio released this week urges lawmakers to eliminate the sales tax exemptions Ohio has offered tech companies as inducements to build here — and to require data centers to fund their own power infrastructure rather than shifting those costs to residential ratepayers.

What is driving the constitutional amendment route is a specific frustration: the legislature has been slow to act, local zoning authority is uneven, and in places like Adams County, there is effectively no zoning at all. The constitutional amendment bypasses all of that. It does not ask the General Assembly to act. It does not depend on individual townships having the right ordinances in place. If it passes, it becomes the law of Ohio at the highest level available.

The path to the ballot is steep but not impossible. Attorney General Dave Yost’s office has ten days from the petition submission to determine whether the summary fairly and truthfully describes the proposed amendment. If certified, the measure moves to the Ohio Ballot Board. Supporters would then need to collect approximately 413,000 valid voter signatures by July — a statewide effort that will require the kind of organizing infrastructure that eight people circulating petitions at a Walmart cannot sustain alone. But the momentum in Ohio right now is real, and the people behind this effort are clear-eyed about what they are asking for.

Whether the amendment reaches the ballot or not, what Adams and Brown county residents did in eight days has already changed the terms of this conversation. They demonstrated that the constitutional route is available, that residents in unzoned rural areas understand they are being used as least-resistance paths for industrial infrastructure, and that they are willing to do something about it. The signature drive is the next test. If 413,000 Ohioans sign on, the data center industry will spend whatever it takes to defeat the measure in November. That fight is worth watching.