Bernie Sanders has praised residents for forcing developers to withdraw plans for a data center in St. Charles, Missouri.

Opposition to the so-called ‘Project Cumulus’ data center led to the applicant CRG Cumulus LLC withdrawing their proposal the day before the St. Charles City Council meeting, which was held on August 19.

CRG Cumulus shares the same address as US construction contractor Clayco, which says it has completed or is currently undertaking more than $12.7 billion in advanced technology projects, with 57 active data center projects totaling around 3GW across the US.

Korb Maxwell, a representative for Project Cumulus, said in a speech at the city council meeting that they “did not get out the information that was necessary to understand this application. So, we decided to withdraw it from public consideration tonight to rethink the application and the items that we put in it.”

Proximity to residential areas, the unknown user of the data center, and the impact on water and energy were all cited as reasons for opposition.

The proposal would have seen a data center be built on a 440-acre land parcel located on both the north and south sides of Highway 370 and between Huster Road and Harry S Truman Boulevard.

The St. Charles County Planning and Zoning Commission had partially recommended the proposal for approval on July 14 by recommending the data center site plan for approval, but denying a request for a Conditional Use Permit for the handling of liquid petroleum products and electrical power generators.

In a post on X, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wrote: “Congratulations to the people of St. Charles, MO, for fighting back against a new data center that would use massive amounts of energy and water.

“This shows what happens when people stand up to unfettered corporate greed.”

It is unclear whether the developers behind Project Cumulus intend to reapply or modify their proposal.

A special session of the St. Charles City Council is to be convened today, with the agenda containing a resolution to impose a “one-year moratorium on the acceptance of applications relating to the establishment or expansion of data centers” that would come into effect immediately if passed.

A similar moratorium was passed in Oldham County, Kentucky, in July of this year, with the scope of the ban extending to projects currently in development.

The phenomenon of developers withdrawing applications due to local opposition has become more common as the public profile of the data center industry has grown. Last month, AWS withdrew plans for a third data center campus in Louisa County, Virginia, as did developer Logix Realty LLC, which rescinded a land rezoning proposal for a 300MW facility in Frankfort, Indiana.

St. Charles is located west of St. Louis. Missouri’s data centers are mostly clustered around Kansas City and St. Louis. Operators in the state include TierPoint, H5, Netrality, Cogent, Lumen, Iron Mountain, Edged Energy, and Rackspace.