217 Today: What happens if new data centers come to C-U? A look at the environmental costs

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Rows of high-performance supercomputers hum inside the server room of the National Petascale Computing Facility in the University of Illinois Research Park in Champaign, Ill., in October 2025. As artificial intelligence workloads surge nationwide, facilities like this depend on massive water-cooling systems—raising new questions about resource use in central Illinois.
  • Photo: Layli Nazarova/Illinois Student Newsroom

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Today’s headlines: 

  • Illinois Governor JB Pritzker says the Trump administration is sowing chaos in the state as a pretext to deploy the National Guard.
  • With the rise of AI, downstate Illinois could be a prime location for new facilities.
  • Protestors and journalists say their first amendment rights are being trampled by tear gas and rubber bullets.
  • Illinois’ attorney general says the state is on firm legal footing in its newly-filed lawsuit against the Trump administration over National Guard deployments.

In today’s deep dive, still to come data centers use a lot of energy and water. And with the rise in AI some worry about the possibility of more facilities coming to downstate Illinois.

217 Today is produced by Stephanie Orellana. Reporting today contributed by Layli Nazarova, Arjun Thakkar, Alex Degman and Mawa Iqbal.

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Stephanie Orellana