Aug 11, 2026
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Add us on GoogleA family in Kentucky is approaching heroic status to opponents of data centers across America. Not only did they soundly reject an offer by the operator of a facility to buy their farm at a substantially inflated price, they have continued the fight against the company, joining a lawsuit to prevent the facility from being built at all.
Ida Huddleston and her family first caught people’s attention in March, when an unnamed Fortune 100 company offered them more than $26 million for half of their 1,200-acre family farm. The offer was roughly 10 times the land’s worth, but the family quickly and soundly rejected the offer.
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“They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not,” Huddleston told the local news outlet WKRC at the time. “We know whenever our food is disappearing, our lands are disappearing, and we don’t have any water.”
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Huddleston’s grandfather and great-grandfather farmed the land, growing wheat during the Great Depression — and she said she has no interest in disrupting that legacy.
Continuing the fight between family farms and data centers
While Huddleston was able to resist the extraordinarily high payday, not all of her neighbors were — including the owners of a mobile home park, where 28 residents lived, many of whom were retired or on a fixed income. The company revised its plans after Huddleston said no, and filed a rezoning request for over 2,000 acres nearby. In May, that rezoning was approved by the Mason County Fiscal Court.
That led Huddleston’s daughter, Delsia Bare, to join a lawsuit aiming to stop the data center project.
She worries, she said, about the impact of the data center on the local community, including the power and gas lines it will require and the effects on the local water supply.
The unknown company agreed to fully fund all necessary infrastructure, including roads, water, sewer, fiber, and electrical service, so the community carries no financial burden, county officials said. And it said the facility would bring 400 permanent jobs to the area, paying six figures.
Huddleston doesn’t believe them.
“I say they’re a liar,” she said. “That’s what I say. It’s a scam.”
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Growing resistance to data center build-out
While Huddleston and her family are rallying opponents in Kentucky, resistance groups in other states are continuing to gain strength.
A recent Gallup poll showed 71% of Americans oppose data centers. Politicians are using them as talking points in midterm elections. And several communities and states have passed laws banning the operations.
That’s having an impact. A report from Goldman Sachs said only about half of the AI computing capacity scheduled to activate by 2028 is expected to come online by its target date, as completion times get stretched due to opposition efforts.
“God gave the land to us to take care of,” Huddleston said to People magazine. “And that’s what we are doing.”
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Chris Morris is a veteran journalist with more than 35 years of experience at many of the internet's biggest news outlets. In addition to his activities as a writer, reporter and editor, Chris is also a frequent panel moderator and speaker at major conferences, including CES and South by Southwest.
