About GridWatch

GridWatch is an independent, reader-supported accountability project tracking the U.S. data-center buildout — the hyperscale campuses reshaping local power grids, water tables, and tax bases, often approved before most residents know a project is even on the agenda.

Why we exist

Data centers tend to arrive the way big infrastructure usually does: quietly. A rezoning request on a consent agenda, a power-supply contract negotiated out of public view, a tax-abatement deal framed as economic development. By the time the concrete is poured and the substation is energized, the decisions that matter — how many megawatts, how many gallons of water, how many years of forgone tax revenue — have already been made. We started GridWatch to put those decisions back in front of the people they affect.

We are not anti-technology and we are not anti-growth. We are pro-accountability. A hyperscale campus can bring investment and jobs; it can also strain a regional grid, draw heavily on local water, and lock a county into decades of abatements. Residents deserve to weigh those trade-offs with real numbers, before the vote — not after.

What we do

• Explain the buildout in plain language — power, water, zoning, and the deals behind them. See Learn.
• Track the record — we index data-center news, filings, and local coverage so the story of where the megawatts are going stays in one searchable place. Start at the National Index or read our own coverage.
• Point you to the best tools across the accountability and open-government movement in our Tools & Resources hub.
• Help you act locally — public-records requests, planning and council meetings, and the questions worth asking in Take Action.

How we work

GridWatch is accountability journalism about public facilities and public decisions. Data centers connect to public grids, draw on public water systems, and are approved through public land-use and tax votes — all of which generate public records. We work from those records, factually and without hysteria. When we don’t know a number, we say so and go find it.

Reader-supported and independent

We take no money from the operators, utilities, or economic-development groups we cover. GridWatch is sustained by readers who want this work to exist. If that’s you, you can Support Us — it keeps the reporting independent and the archive open.