Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said the company has stopped using nondisclosure agreements in negotiations with government agencies over new data center construction, responding to a wave of local resistance that has produced more than 100 proposed moratoriums across the United States.
The NDAs had become a flashpoint for community opposition. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich cited a pattern: developers securing permits before announcing projects, then signing local officials to nondisclosure agreements before the public learned what was coming. That dynamic fueled backlash in states like New York, which enacted a one-year moratorium on large data center permits.
Garman, in a blog post, argued that the moratoriums could cost the U.S. the infrastructure race. "More than 100 data center moratoriums are under consideration," he said, warning the restrictions would "write the U.S. a losing ticket to this race."
He also countered four common objections to data centers: excessive water use, rising electricity costs, pollution, and lack of community benefit. He cited an Amazon report showing that direct data center water consumption accounts for 0.5 percent of all industrial water usage in the U.S.—less than golf courses or almond farming.
But the numbers don't tell the full story. Nvidia recently introduced a cooling system it claims eliminates "pretty much all water usage" from data centers, yet those claims—like Amazon's—exclude water consumed in electricity generation and chip manufacturing. Scientists have called for independent studies on data center water and energy footprints, noting the absence of federal or state reporting requirements for tech companies.
On electricity rates, Garman blamed aging grid infrastructure for price spikes in states with heavy data center concentrations, not the facilities themselves. He noted that rates have fallen or grown more slowly elsewhere.
That framing conflicts with findings by an independent grid watchdog, which identified data centers as the primary driver of a 76 percent year-over-year price increase on America's largest electrical grid. The data—and the interpretations of it—remain contested.
The fundamental tension is structural: the U.S. needs massive power and cooling capacity to compete in AI hardware deployment. Local communities want assurance that new facilities won't strain water supplies or drive up electricity costs. Transparency, Garman now concedes, matters enough to abandon NDAs. Whether it will be enough to stop the moratoriums is another question.
