Fairfax, Iowa is Being Used
- Kal Inois
- Jun 4
- 11 min read
Two of the biggest corporations on earth are building massive AI computer facilities right on Fairfax's doorstep. Fairfax gets the traffic, the noise, the dirty air, and the higher utility bills. The corporations get everything else.
On June 3, 2026, Fairfax residents packed a special city council meeting to talk about one thing: the traffic nightmare that has taken over their streets. Construction workers headed to and from two massive building projects nearby have turned quiet Fairfax roads into a daily hazard. Near-miss accidents, long backups, and roads that were never built to handle this kind of volume.
The stories from residents tell it plainly. "It takes me sometimes 45 minutes to pull out of my driveway," said Fairfax resident Barbara Conner. "It's unreal." Another resident, Cathy Krouse, described what mornings now sound like in Fairfax: "Traffic starts at about 4:30 in the morning and it's pretty steady till 7." Most Fairfax families are still asleep at 4:30 in the morning. The construction crews are not.
But the traffic is just the beginning of what is coming for this community. And most Fairfax residents do not yet know the full story.
WHAT IS ACTUALLY BEING BUILT NEXT DOOR
In the industrial park in southwest Cedar Rapids, right on Fairfax's border, two corporations are building what will become some of the largest AI computer facilities in the United States. One belongs to QTS, a massive data center company, and the other belongs to Google.
Think of a data center as an enormous warehouse packed wall to wall with the computer servers that power artificial intelligence, cloud storage, and corporate technology. To keep those servers from overheating, they need two things in enormous quantities every single day: electricity and water. The QTS campus alone will cover roughly 600 acres, stretching directly into Fairfax. Google's facility could draw 14 million gallons of water per day from the Cedar River. No, that is not a typo. Per day.
What does Fairfax get in return? Fairfax Mayor Jo Ann Beer has said it plainly: zero tax benefit. Not one dollar. The projects were approved by Cedar Rapids, and Cedar Rapids collects the money. Fairfax absorbs the consequences.
"Why do the billion dollar companies come to small towns? Because we say yes. I'm asking you to say no. Water is not an unlimited resource. Land is not an unlimited resource. And ultimately at the end of the day, people matter." – Fairfax City Council Member Cindy Anderson, June 1, 2026
THE WATER PROBLEM
Data centers need enormous amounts of water to cool their servers, and that water has to come from somewhere. In this case it comes from the same sources Fairfax residents, farmers, and local businesses depend on.
QTS has already shown exactly how it handles that responsibility. It was actually a Fairfax Water Department supervisor, Brian Merta, who first raised the alarm. While talking with a contractor digging a city well, Merta learned the same company was heading to the Big Cedar Industrial area next. Something felt wrong. He contacted the Iowa DNR and Linn County Public Health, and that investigation uncovered 40 unpermitted wells dug on the QTS construction site without permits, fees, or required notice to county health officials. Fairfax caught it. Meanwhile, QTS is now facing scrutiny in Georgia, where the company drained more than 29 million gallons of water undetected, equivalent to 44 Olympic swimming pools, while Fayetteville residents were simultaneously being told to stop watering their lawns due to drought conditions. QTS paid a retroactive bill only after being caught. This is not a company that makes mistakes. This is a company with a pattern.
When corporations negotiate water access in other communities, they do not negotiate the same deal residents get. In Arizona, Google secured a water rate of $6.08 per 1,000 gallons while the people who actually lived there paid $10.80 for the same amount. Iowa has no reason to expect anything different.
QTS'S TRACK RECORD BEFORE OPENING DAY
40 unpermitted wells dug on the Cedar Rapids and Fairfax site before the facility even opened
Nearly 30 million gallons of water used without payment at a QTS facility in Georgia
A large data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day. Google's Cedar Rapids facility alone could draw 14 million, nearly three times that, directly from the Cedar River.
YOUR ELECTRIC BILL IS GOING UP
Corporations and their political allies will tell you that having a data center nearby is good for electricity rates. That promise has been made in dozens of communities across the country, but it has not come true in any of them.
First, understand what these facilities actually demand from the grid. A typical hyperscale data center draws 100 to 1,000 megawatts of electricity continuously, the equivalent of powering a small to mid-sized city, every hour of every day, 365 days a year. At one megawatt powering roughly 700 to 800 homes, a single 100-megawatt facility consumes as much electricity as 70,000 to 80,000 households. Unlike residential demand, which rises and falls with the time of day, a data center's load never drops. It is a flat, permanent drain on the grid, around the clock, forever. The QTS campus stretching into Fairfax is not a single 100-megawatt facility. It is seven buildings across 600 acres.
In Northern Virginia, which has the most data centers of any place in the country, electricity prices shot up more than 1,000% in just two years, driven almost entirely by data center power demand. Independent regulators confirmed data centers were the cause. Residents paid the difference on their utility bills.
Iowa residents are already paying more, and the data centers are not even running yet. Alliant Energy raised rates by nearly 14% across two increases in 2024 and 2025. Now Alliant is moving to build a new 850-megawatt gas power plant near Fairfax to handle the electricity demand these facilities will create. A fossil fuel power plant next to a small town, built to keep Google's servers running. That plant, and the costs of running it, will show up on Fairfax residents' bills for decades.
In April 2026, Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited the QTS site and assured Iowans not to worry about their electricity costs. In the same breath, he acknowledged that data centers have raised rates in other places. That is not a reassurance – that is an admission.
THE NOISE AND THE AIR NEVER STOP
Once a data center is running, it does not take nights off. The cooling systems, the fans, and the diesel backup generators run every hour of every day, all year long. Neighbors of these facilities across the country describe a constant low hum that never stops, linked to headaches, disrupted sleep, and chronic stress. One Virginia resident told U.S. News: "We don't see the dark of night anymore." The lights from a campus this size erase darkness entirely for the neighborhoods around it.
The air quality threat is real as well. Data centers keep up to 54 industrial diesel generators on site for power outages. Diesel exhaust produces fine particles, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide, all of which are linked to asthma, heart disease, and lung damage. Researchers found that the air pollution around data center clusters in Virginia can be worse than living near a gas power plant. If the grid goes down for an extended period, those generators can burn through an entire year's worth of permitted emissions in just a few days.
In Memphis, Tennessee, residents near an xAI data center filed notice to sue under the Clean Air Act after discovering the company planned to run dozens of gas turbines daily. The air quality promises had not held. They rarely do. The human toll of living next to these facilities is no longer anecdotal. In Granbury, Texas, after a large computing facility moved in, TIME magazine documented more than 40 residents reporting hypertension, heart palpitations, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, and panic attacks, at least 10 of whom went to urgent care or the emergency room. One woman collapsed at home with a heart rate of 200 beats per minute and a migraine she described as worse than childbirth. A mother reported that her 8-year-old daughter was losing her hearing, with fluid leaking from her ears. In Bristow, Virginia, a woman living near a Google data center campus told U.S. News the noise triggers anxiety attacks and feels like "an internal organ vibration." A peer-reviewed study published in February 2026 by George Mason University researchers projected that U.S. data centers by 2030 could cause 600,000 asthma symptom cases and 1,300 premature deaths annually, a public health burden exceeding $20 billion. Virginia's own state legislature concluded that the industrial scale of data centers makes them "largely incompatible with residential uses." Fairfax is a residential community.
THE JOBS PROMISE DOES NOT HOLD UP
The biggest sales pitch for any data center project is jobs. Big numbers get announced, local officials celebrate, and the deal gets done. What happens after is a different story.
Construction jobs are real but temporary, lasting two to three years, and are largely filled by workers brought in from outside the area. Once the facility opens, the permanent workforce is startlingly small. A Virginia state study found that a typical large data center employs around 50 permanent workers. Microsoft's data center in Quincy, Washington, shrank from 500 construction workers to 50 full-time employees once it opened. A billion-dollar facility, providing a mere fifty jobs.
For reference: a single Walmart Supercenter employs more permanent workers than most data centers. Researchers at the Brookings Institution confirmed this with hard data. An Amazon warehouse creates between 1,000 and 1,500 permanent positions. A data center of equal size creates around 50. The workers driving through Fairfax right now are not building Fairfax's economic future. They are passing through it on their way somewhere else.
FAIRFAX GOT CUT OUT OF THE MONEY
Cedar Rapids negotiated deals that could bring the city over $1 billion in property tax revenue over the life of the projects, while giving QTS and Google $529 million in tax rebates. QTS agreed to put up to $18 million into a community fund over 20 years, less than two cents on every dollar of rebate the company receives. Cedar Rapids made the deal, so Cedar Rapids collects the check.
Fairfax gets none of it, and is already being handed the costs instead. Council member Dan Wozniak put a number to it at a recent city meeting. The town is looking at a roundabout at 80th and 151, more improvements at Church and 151, and additional work near the Fairfax sign, all of it made necessary by data center traffic. "We're talking millions of dollars," Wozniak said. Mayor Beer confirmed it: "A roundabout at the intersection is gonna be more than a million dollars and everything in between." That bill goes to Fairfax taxpayers. Not to QTS, not to Google, and not to Cedar Rapids.
OTHER TOWNS WERE TOLD THE SAME THINGS
Fairfax is not the first community to be in this position. Across the country, towns and counties have been promised that a data center would bring prosperity. The pattern of what actually happens is remarkably consistent.
Consider Southaven, Mississippi. Jason Haley had lived in his Southaven home for 20 years when, in the summer of 2025, he started hearing a noise from outside. It sounded like a leaf blower. It never stopped. Elon Musk's xAI company had planted gas turbines near his neighborhood to power its Colossus 2 data center, running 16 to 24 hours a day with no permits and no emissions monitoring. Haley stood before the Southaven mayor and Board of Aldermen at a packed meeting and used one word to describe what his home had become: "torture."
His neighbor Krystal Polk had planned to renovate the home her family had owned for three generations. Those plans stopped the day the turbines turned on. She no longer knows what to do with the property. Another resident, Lauren Van, put it simply: "We all breathe the same air, and the pollution is not isolated to Southaven." A former choir director named Angie Davis, whose daughter and granddaughter live next to the turbines, told regulators: "It seems to me that we are being very thoroughly thrown under the bus." Mississippi regulators approved xAI's permit for 41 permanent gas turbines anyway. They held the hearing on Election Day, 200 miles from Southaven, where the people affected actually live.
Mississippi Today reported that Southaven residents are now regretting the data center's existence. That is not a projection. That is the lived experience of people who were told it would be fine.
In Northern Virginia, electricity prices spiked more than 1,000% in two years. State lawmakers found that data center energy demand would push the state's power usage up 183% by 2040, with rolling blackouts expected within a few years. In Reno, Nevada, a massive data center was projected to produce only 73 permanent jobs after cycling through thousands of construction workers. In Wilmington, Ohio, a city of 12,000 people, residents discovered Amazon's plan for a $4 billion, 471-acre data center at a school board meeting held at 7:15 in the morning, by which point officials had already approved a compensation agreement. The promised jobs: 100. Virginia's data center tax breaks cost state taxpayers $1.6 billion in a single year.
In every case, residents were told it would be different in their town. In every case, it was not.
The following video was reported on KCRG, one year ago. Compare what we know now to what was reported then.:
WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
The decisions that will shape what Fairfax looks like ten years from now are being made in the coming months. Here is where your voice matters most.
Take It Directly to Cedar Rapids
Cedar Rapids made this deal. Cedar Rapids collects the money. Cedar Rapids owes Fairfax an answer. Contact Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O'Donnell and the Cedar Rapids City Council directly and tell them that Fairfax is absorbing real costs — in road damage, traffic danger, water stress, and lost quality of life — while receiving nothing in return. Demand a formal intergovernmental agreement that compensates Fairfax for what this project is taking from it. The Cedar Rapids City Council meets regularly and accepts public comment. Show up. Write. Call. Make them say Fairfax's name on the record. Cedar Rapids City Hall: www.cedar-rapids.org/local_government/city_council/index.php
Show Up to City Council
The June 3 meeting proved that residents showing up changes the conversation. Attend every public session. Bring a neighbor with you. Speak during public comment, and demand that the council pursue formal compensation from Cedar Rapids for the infrastructure costs this project is forcing onto Fairfax.
Contact Linn County
Linn County already tried to fine QTS for the unpermitted wells. Push them to follow through and require independent water monitoring around the entire site. Reach the Linn County Board of Supervisors, and let them know Fairfax is paying attention.
Watch the Iowa Utilities Board
Any new power plant proposed near Fairfax requires approval from the Iowa Utilities Board, and that process includes a public comment period. When it opens, show up and submit written comments. The Iowa Utilities Board needs to hear from the people who will live with the consequences.
Call Your State Legislators
Iowa's legislature can require water usage disclosure, mandate community benefit agreements, and reform the tax deals that let corporations take hundreds of millions in public money while communities absorb all the costs. Find your representatives at www.legis.iowa.gov/legislators/find, and call them.
Document Everything
Photograph traffic backups. Note the date and location of every near-miss you see. Report road damage. If your water pressure changes, report it to the Iowa DNR,
and keep a record. If you experience health symptoms you connect to noise or air quality, see a doctor and document it. The ability to hold corporations accountable depends on having a paper trail they cannot dismiss.
Connect With Neighboring Communities
The public hearing in nearby Palo drew 150 people fighting the exact same fight. Fairfax is not alone. A coordinated regional voice across the Cedar Rapids corridor carries far more weight than any single town. Talk to your neighbors, your church, your community groups, and anyone else who depends on this land, this water, and this air.
Citizens Against Tyranny Network (CATN) is an independent progressive civic advocacy and investigative journalism outlet based in Southwest Missouri, published via Substack and citizensvstyranny.wixsite.com/website. CATN does not accept corporate advertising or funding. All reporting is independently sourced and verified. Sources include The Gazette (Cedar Rapids), KCRG-TV9, the Corridor Business Journal, Iowa Public Radio, the World Resources Institute, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, Consumer Reports, the Brookings Institution, Built In, U.S. News and World Report, the Nevada Independent, Cardinal News, and public statements by Fairfax city officials. All statistics are current as of June 2026.
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