Amazon workers urge Seattle to halt new data centers

On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council is set to vote on a proposed one-year moratorium on new data centers, just two months after multiple companies submitted plans to build five large-scale facilities in the city. The strongest voices backing this pause come from an unexpected corner: current employees of Seattle’s dominant tech employer, Amazon. These workers joined others last week to testify in favor of the policy, highlighting growing tensions between tech expansion and community well-being.

Across the United States, data centers have ignited protests over water consumption, rising local electricity prices, and noise pollution. In Seattle and surrounding King County, the conflict is reaching a critical juncture. If the council approves the moratorium on June 9th, any new large-scale data center proposals in Seattle will be shelved for a year, giving the city time to craft legislation aimed at reasserting control over its energy and infrastructure resources.

At two city council hearings, residents overwhelmingly supported the measure, including engineers, software developers, and other tech insiders. “In my job, I see the consequences of the all-costs-justified AI buildout,” testified Liesl Wigand, an Amazon senior software engineer, during a Seattle Land Use and Sustainability committee hearing last Wednesday. “The biggest issue is a belief that AI should be how we solve everything, while ignoring the resources that it costs. This culture is omnipresent across tech.”

Wigand belongs to Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a coalition of current and former workers focused on climate action. Last year, more than 1,000 Amazon employees signed an open letter accusing the company of “casting aside its climate goals to build AI” and demanding that all data centers be powered with 100 percent additional, local renewable energy. Sarah Tracy, a former Amazon software engineer and group member, said the moratorium provides a long-awaited platform for speaking out.

The proposed data centers, submitted by four unnamed companies, would collectively demand up to 369 megawatts , roughly one-third of Seattle’s average daily electricity use , and consume 10 times more power than the city’s existing 30 data centers, according to The Seattle Times.

Wigand, noting her pride in living in a city that legally protects employees who speak out politically, urged lawmakers to take the lead in “setting the terms” for data center development. She pointed to examples of responsibly built data centers that include climate mitigation measures and AI safety committees, but stressed that Seattle currently lacks such standards. “Let’s not let Big Tech burn Seattle to win the AI race,” she said.

The emergency moratorium is paired with a resolution calling for further research into data centers’ impacts on city infrastructure, utility rates, water and land use, jobs, and public health. Yet some critics argue the plan doesn’t go far enough. A key loophole: if developers submit all paperwork before the moratorium vote, construction can proceed regardless.

Patrick Schloesser, a software engineer at Amazon, urged the committee to require developers to operate transparently, rather than hiding behind NDAs and shell companies. He proposed that each developer provide 100 percent additional renewable energy to the local grid and face taxes for layoffs. He also called for worker-led safety committees reporting to the city, “so that if any AI developed in your facilities is becoming a risk to the city, the city can prepare and intervene if necessary.”

At a separate Parks and City Light committee hearing, Darius Irani, another Amazon software engineer, demanded that companies also supply additional energy transmission and storage capacity and publicly report water and electricity usage. “We can’t rely on these companies to regulate themselves , Seattle needs to set the terms so the way any new data centers get built here actually moves us closer to the future we want,” he said.

Dozens of others testified in favor, including electrical engineers and tech workers from various companies, some of whom said they had lost jobs due to AI. One speaker linked the data center boom to Seattle’s housing affordability crisis and a marked rise in homelessness since 2024. Others cited recent increases in their electricity bills, the potential displacement of single-family homes, and played recordings of data center noise audible from miles away.

Some testimony reflected a broader backlash against the AI industry. One speaker, who worked on AI at a startup, argued that data centers primarily benefit corporations and that “I don’t think it’s going to help us that much.” Another quipped that AI “doesn’t need more megawatts , it needs more mega-resolution,” drawing an appreciative “Dang!” from the audience.

Others expressed disillusionment. “If you’d asked me a year ago if I supported a data center moratorium, I would’ve said no,” said one speaker. “At that time, the tech companies were telling us they were planning to power them with a massive buildout of renewables , with utility-scale battery storage, and with demand-response capability that would help stabilize the grid. They said they’d use closed-loop cooling systems that limited water use and would provide free heating to nearby buildings. But is that what they did? No.”

A former Amazon software engineer who spent years in Seattle , speaking anonymously due to fear of retaliation , told The Verge that companies are “barreling ahead” with data center construction without input from workers or communities. “We have a real opportunity here to use the pause, the moratorium, to say ‘Okay, if this is a technology that we’re gonna live with, how can we really make it so that the infrastructure and the technology itself are benefiting people rather than just consolidating wealth in the hands of some tech billionaires?’” the former employee said.

Despite the scale of opposition, supporters of the moratorium are not without leverage. Individual data center projects have been canceled or scaled back after local protests, and moratoriums have been proposed at all levels of government. New York’s state legislature recently voted for a one-year ban on new large-scale data centers, sending the measure to the governor’s desk.

Schloesser cited reports in his testimony that Amazon is spending $200 billion on capital this year and Microsoft $190 billion, much of it directed toward AI and data centers. Meanwhile, he noted, Amazon has laid off 30,000 corporate employees in the past eight months. “What that tells me is that Big Tech is desperate to build as much compute capacity as it can, as fast as it can,” Schloesser said. “That desperation gives our city leverage.”