Nine wolves were killed by federal officials in northern Wisconsin in late August and early September, following “a series of verified threats to human health and safety," according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
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Health insurance was the third highest ranking issue among voters, and outranked data centers, abortion, schools or crime.
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Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich will not seek a third term as the city government’s top executive.
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Data centers may provide a major economic development opportunity for local communities in Wisconsin, but concerns around water and energy use and potential costs to residents have made them increasingly controversial.
A new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum aims to put those issues — and Wisconsin’s data center debate — into context. Researchers examined tax incentives supporting those projects as well as their energy and water use.
Three major data center projects are in varying stages of development in Mount Pleasant, Port Washington and Beaver Dam. Others have been proposed but canceled in DeForest, Greenleaf and Janesville as polling has shown the issue to be unpopular with the public.
State law allows qualified developers to avoid paying sales and use tax on most purchases supporting the construction and operation of a data center.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates Wisconsin will lose out on $1.5 billion in sales tax revenues related to data center construction between 2024 and 2028, as well as forgo $369 million annually in sales tax revenue related to data center operations.
Wisconsin is one of 38 states that offer tax incentives to data centers. Jason Stein, one of the report’s authors, said without its sales tax exemption, Wisconsin might not have attracted the prominent developments.
“I think it’s reasonable to think that a lot of this investment — maybe most of this investment — would not have occurred without the incentive,” he said.
The report says the state could “recoup a significant portion of the forgone sales tax revenues” if the sales tax exemption helped attract a significant share of data center investment to Wisconsin.
That’s through income and sales taxes paid by construction workers and corporate income taxes paid by construction companies, as well as additional taxes paid by utilities serving data centers.
Data centers are also expected to generate increased property tax revenues in the communities hosting them.
Researchers reviewed local development agreements in Mount Pleasant, Port Washington and Beaver Dam, as well as proposed deals in communities where developments fell through. They found that, in general, local communities were striking “reasonable deals” that included financial safeguards.
Those safeguards often included limits on municipal borrowing, guaranteed property values and incentives tied to project performance, the report said.
“If the developer and the community follow through on their agreement and it moves forward as laid out, then those agreements offer substantial protections for the communities,” Stein said. “There are significant protections in each of these deals.”
While much of the public debate around data centers in Wisconsin has centered around water use, policy forum researchers found the bigger challenge is meeting the large electricity demands of those projects while protecting existing ratepayers.
That’s because water use in Wisconsin has declined over the past generation as some heavy industry left the state, industrial and residential users became more efficient and electric utilities shifted some energy generation from “water-intensive” coal plants to natural gas and renewable energy, the report said.
From 2011 to 2024, water withdrawals in the state fell by more than 500 billion gallons, or almost 24%, according to the report.
The three main data center projects in Wisconsin are projected to use less water than the decline in water withdrawals over that period, the report states.
“We were on this track to use less and less water because of changes in our society, and maybe this will slow that down somewhat,” Stein said. “But that is a different thing than saying, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re using more water than ever before.’”
For example, Racine Water Works, the utility providing water for Microsoft’s data center campus in Mount Pleasant, saw its annual water sales decline by 2.3 billion gallons from 2000 to 2025, according to the report.
That’s “more than 250 times” as much water as the 8.4 million gallons annually Microsoft’s data center will use when fully operational, the report states.
While long-term declines in water use are expected to help offset demand from data centers, Wisconsin’s electricity demand is expected to grow, in large part driven by demand from data centers.
Peak demand from all customers on the grid is expected to rise from 14.6 gigawatts in 2024 to 19.9 gigawatts by 2030, the report states.
A recent report from state utility regulators found data centers were driving that projected peak demand growth.
The report found that the state Public Service Commission modified proposals from We Energies and Alliant Energy establishing rates for data center-scale customers to shield existing residential customers from costs associated with data centers.
But it remains to be seen how data centers will affect transmission rates, which are set at the federal level, said Tyler Byrnes, one of the report’s authors.
“It’s a little bit easier to do the math on one power plant for one data center, whereas you’re starting to divide up electrons moving across power lines (and) across state lines, so it’s more complicated,” he said.
He also said there is not currently an approved data center rate framework for developments of that scale outside the service territories of Alliant Energy and We Energies. He said policymakers may want to consider adopting a statewide framework for electric rates tied to data centers.
The report also notes that there are unresolved questions about whether utilities will be able to bring new energy generation and transmission lines online quickly enough to meet the growing demand.
This story was originally published by WPR.
Report: Wisconsin could make up taxes lost to data center incentives is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The construction industry accounted for around half of the non-farm job growth in Wisconsin over the last year, as a few high-profile data center projects moved forward in the state.
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Data centers may provide a major economic development opportunity for local communities in Wisconsin, but concerns around water and energy use and potential costs to residents have made them increasingly controversial.
The post Report: Wisconsin could make up taxes lost to data center incentives appeared first on WPR.
The plan still needs a vote from the village board, but it’s part of a larger effort by the company to increase manufacturing capacity in Mount Pleasant.
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An Ozaukee County judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging local development incentives supporting a $15 billion data center campus under construction in Port Washington.
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Under the settlement, Credit Acceptance Corporation, or CAC, will provide $694 million in cash and debt relief to consumers connected to their car loans. But the deal does not require the company to admit fault or wrongdoing.
The post Wisconsin consumers, state to receive more than $11M from auto finance settlement appeared first on WPR.
After regulators told them to go back to the drawing board last month, American Transmission Co. has reapplied to build a more than $2 billion transmission project that will serve the data center being built in Port Washington.
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The median home price in northeast Wisconsin has more than doubled over the last decade while fair market rents in the region’s two largest cities have also climbed sharply.
Local officials, housing advocates and economists say those cost increases — fueled by tight supply and high demand — have made it harder for young families to purchase their first home and for renters to make ends meet.
Northeast Wisconsin is home to Green Bay and the Fox Valley. It’s a mix of medium-sized cities and rural communities. Wisconsin Realtors Association data shows median home prices in the region climbed from $145,000 in July 2016 to $331,000 in July 2026.
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David Clark, an economist for the Wisconsin Realtors Association, said home prices across the state didn’t rise very fast for much of the 2010s, and neither did housing supply.
He said a surge of millennials entered the housing market when mortgage rates fell below 3% in 2020 while many baby boomers remained in their existing homes, contributing to a supply and demand imbalance and rising prices. While homebuilding has picked up in recent years, he said supply remains limited.
“We’ve got tight inventory statewide, and that same statewide picture is pretty similar to the circumstances in the northeast region,” Clark said.
Local officials and advocates say tight inventory in the owner-occupied housing market has led some residents interested in purchasing a home to continue renting, putting upward pressure on those prices as well.
“There are bottlenecks everywhere,” said Mindy Howell, housing services lead case manager for The Salvation Army-Fox Cities. “Housing is more expensive, so more people are renting.”
She said that’s meant people with moderate incomes are competing with lower-income residents for available rental units, saying it’s “very hard to find affordable housing.”
Beyond supply and demand, property managers say rising costs from insurance, property taxes and repairs all factor into rent prices.
“We’ve tracked five years of financial data across more than 5,000 rental units: Operating costs rose 34.2% from 2019 to 2023,” said Rick Van Der Leest, president of the Apartment Association of Northeast Wisconsin and Fox Valley Apartment Association.
Fair market rents in Green Bay and Appleton, the region’s two largest cities, also rose over the same period, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Appleton increased from $718 in 2016 to $810 in 2020 and $1,236 in 2026, federal data shows. Those rents in Green Bay increased from $756 in 2016 to $822 in 2020 and $1,164 in 2026.
Amber Edwards is a community organizer for JOSHUA, a faith-based nonprofit in Green Bay that works on housing and other social issues. She said rising costs and tight supply have been hard on residents of all backgrounds.
“There are people that I know that have really good jobs, stable careers that are struggling to find housing in their 40s because it is so tight and difficult to obtain, and difficult to maintain,” she said.
Green Bay and Appleton each need to build thousands of housing units, a mix of single-family and rentals, in the coming years to keep pace with projected housing demand, according to recent housing reports.
A 2025 housing market study from the city found Green Bay needed to build 2,100 rental units and 2,159 owner-occupied units by 2040 under a conservative growth scenario and 4,575 rental units and 5,072 owner-occupied units under a high-growth scenario.
“We need everything, from low income to high income, small apartments to large,” said Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich. “That’s been our focus is just to do whatever we possibly can to partner with high-quality developers to make this happen for the residents here.”
Genrich said the number of units per year built within the city has increased from an average of 144 units per year from 2015 to 2019 to an average of 368 units from 2023 to 2025.
He said private developments, in which the city played no role, did contribute to that increase. But he also said the city has tried to use a variety of tools from crafting more flexible zoning codes to using tax increment financing to encourage development.
Meanwhile, the city of Appleton needed to build 3,981 single-family, 442 two-family and 158 multi-family units between 2019 and 2040 to accommodate population growth projections, according to a 2024 housing affordability report from the city.
Appleton Mayor Jake Woodford said the city was currently working its way through zoning code revisions aimed at promoting duplex development and other zoning designations. He said the city has also worked to “streamline” the development process itself, but he said there isn’t a silver bullet that will solve the issue.
“I think the underlying issue of the cost of building housing is a huge factor,” he said. “Land availability to some extent, but cost of construction is a big challenge.”
Due to high construction costs, he said, a newly built home that may be considered a “starter home” based on its size and number of bedrooms is likely to cost $400,000 or more, which is “unattainable” for many first-time buyers.
“Housing is becoming less affordable, and that presents a real challenge for our communities,” he said. “Because here in the city of Appleton, if people cannot afford to live in this community, how do we expect to have a thriving local economy?”
To address the issue, local leaders and housing advocates said they would like to see state leaders invest in expanding low-interest loan programs for affordable housing developers and first-time homebuyers and create more tools to help housing developments make financial sense for builders.
This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of five news outlets.
Housing costs have risen sharply in northeast Wisconsin over the last decade is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Waukesha-based Generac has entered into a long-term agreement with Amazon to provide up to $8 billion worth of backup generators for the tech giant’s data centers.
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Tribal nations and environmental groups are urging state officials to take stronger action against Enbridge.
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The nation’s largest farmer-owned cooperative plans to spend $700 million to build a new soybean processing plant in Evansville.
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The Line 5 pipeline returned to service through the use of a temporary bypass around the site of a major gas leak last month in Iron County, Enbridge announced Monday.
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Wisconsin’s congressional delegation is split over President Donald Trump’s proposal to send $5,000 checks to every American adult if Republicans win in the midterms.
The post Wisconsin’s congressional delegation split over $5K ‘Trump Dividend’ appeared first on WPR.
The median home price in northeast Wisconsin has more than doubled over the last decade, while fair market rents in the region’s two largest cities have also climbed sharply.
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The Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously found that the former Green Bay city clerk likely broke state law by issuing duplicate ballots in two elections this year.
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Nurses at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison say the health system violated federal labor law in its opposition to their unionization effort.
The post SSM St. Mary’s nurses in Madison file federal labor complaint against health system appeared first on WPR.
The EF-3 tornado that destroyed Fox Valley homes and businesses also reshaped a race that could help decide control of the state Legislature this November.
The post The Fox Valley’s massive tornado upended a key Assembly race appeared first on WPR.
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