Josie Huang
is a reporter and Weekend Edition host who spotlights the people and places at the heart of our region.
Published October 18, 2023 5:00 AM
A newly opened "resiliency center" in Monterey Park is promoting the importance of mental health after a deadly mass shooting rocked the city earlier this year.
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Topline:
Monterey Park has joined a growing network of cities that have opened “resiliency centers” to help survivors of gun violence recover from trauma.
The backstory: Earlier this year, a gunman killed 11 people at a ballroom dance studio in L.A. County’s worst mass shooting. The center in Monterey Park focuses on providing therapy and teaching coping skills to a largely Asian immigrant clientele.
What's a resiliency center? After a mass shooting, some communities decide they want to provide long-term services to survivors and community members, everything from legal aid to mental health counseling. The Department of Justice has provided millions in grants to about 20 communities nationwide.
How Monterey Park’s center is different: Programs are provided in Mandarin and Cantonese, the first language of many locals. There’s also the challenge of overcoming cultural reluctance in Asian American communities to seek help. There's a heavy emphasis on mindfulness and stress reduction activities for clients who may not want therapy but could use trauma coping skills.
In a sparse multi-purpose room, a handful of middle-aged Chinese American women have rolled out black yoga mats and are studying the moves of a qigong instructor gently giving instructions.
Inhale. Gather. Exhale.
Qigong — a mind-body-spirit practice using simple, repetitive exercises — is being offered at a new center in Monterey Park with a grimly-specific mission: tending to survivors and community members after the deadliest shooting in L.A. County history took place in their city.
The Monterey Park Resiliency Center offers mindfulness and stress-relief activities like qi gong.
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Stretch through your wrists, and relax.
Listen
3:55
For Monterey Park’s Shooting Survivors, A Place To Mend The Mind and Spirit
Less than a mile from where the women focus on breath work, a gunman entered the Star Dance Ballroom Studio on Jan. 21 and fired on a crowd of mostly older Asian Americans celebrating the start of Lunar New Year. Eleven people died and nine others were injured.
Up until the shooting, Monterey Park was best-known for being America’s first suburban Chinatown, with a population of 62,000 that is two-thirds Asian.
Now it’s on a long list of places reeling from mass gun violence — and part of a smaller but growing network of cities that are opening federally-funded “resiliency centers” to help with recovery.
Triage, then healing
Mass shootings are not only increasingly commonplace in the U.S. — 550 so far this year — they've grown in lethality over the past decade. Shootings in which four or more people are killed have nearly doubled.
Typically after the deadliest incidents, a crisis response team from the FBI parachutes into a community to set up a family assistance center, drawing help from local nonprofits with community ties. That was particularly key in Monterey Park with its large immigrant population. The lead nonprofit on the ground was the Chinatown Service Center, which typically provides medical and behavioral health services, but found itself helping victims’ families with burial services.
“That's really important to be able to speak the language and to understand how communities respond culturally when events like this happen,” said Kristina Rose, who heads the Office for Victims of Crime in the Department of Justice.
Monterey Park Resiliency Center 311 N. Rural Dr., Monterey Park, CA 91755 (currently housed inside the Sierra Vista Park Community Center) E-mail: mpkhoperc@cscla.org Ph: 626-609-3399 Website: https://www.mpkhope.com/ Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
More and more communities have been transitioning their family assistance centers into long-term operations. Over the last decade, the Department of Justice has met the demand by awarding millions of dollars in grants to about 20 communities that want to provide ongoing legal aid, victim's advocacy and mental health counseling to survivors.
Over the last two years, resiliency centers have opened in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York. A few years earlier, a resiliency center opened in Las Vegas after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting.
An investigator works at the scene of a mass shooting in Monterey Park, California, on Jan. 22, 2023.
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When it became evident there was support for a resiliency center in Monterey Park, the Chinatown Service Center was a clear choice to operate the center, said Rose, whose office is currently working on the grant process with the nonprofit.
The MPK Hope Resiliency Center, as it is officially called, has been averaging about 80 visits a week since it fully opened in September. It’s a number that staff want to increase, given the hundreds of people they could be potentially serving along with partner organizations such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California and the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office.
Bringing mental health awareness
Notice how you feel, anything starting to open up.
The qigong instructor, Dr. Sara Ptasnik is a physician at the Chinatown Service Center. She doesn’t speak Mandarin or Cantonese like her students, so the center’s case management coordinator, Janet Yu, interprets the best she can, toggling between both languages.
Offering in-language help is a priority at the Monterey Park center, but cultural competency extends beyond translating materials, according to its director Nina Loc.
“When it comes to the Asian population, it's more of the lack of awareness, lack of willingness to accept that there could be mental health issue within a family or within the culture,” said Loc who also serves as the behavioral health director at Chinatown Service Center.
The center's case management coordinator Janet Yu provides live interpreting as Dr. Sara Ptasnik teaches a qi gong class.
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Loc said the inclination for many in the community is to not seek out counseling, which research bears out. A 2018 study by the federal Office of Minority Health found Asians were 60% less likely to have received mental health treatment than white people.
The Monterey Park center offers both individual and group therapy with the understanding that it’s not for everyone, especially an older, foreign-born generation.
That’s why there’s so much emphasis on offering stress-reduction activities such as yoga, Buddhist chanting, beading, cooking or journaling.
“We have heard a lot of individuals that don't feel comfortable going out,” Loc said. “These are signs that they're affected by [the shooting]. Hopefully coming through to the center, they could learn coping skills to be more comfortable with the new norm.”
And, Loc added, they may become more receptive to trying therapy in the future.
Ways to talk to Asian American elders about mental health:
Share how you went to a therapist for a problem, like with work or school. Then list the ways a therapist has helped.
Be open-minded and curious about the elder's viewpoints.
If the elder is not interested in traditional therapy, see if they would like to talk to someone at church or temple.
The Monterey Park resiliency center is temporarily being housed inside the Sierra Vista Community Center.
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For some survivors, it may take months, if not years, to recognize they need help.
That’s the experience of staff at the resiliency center in Las Vegas. In 2017, a gunman killed 58 people and injured hundreds at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. Years later, two more people died from shooting-related injuries.
Tyler Winkler, a victim right’s attorney at the center, said the five-year anniversary of the shooting last year served as a prompt for some survivors.
“That brought in a lot of folks who were like, ‘Wow, I think maybe I'm ready to see what you guys have going on,'” Winkler said.
Winkler said survivors’ trauma can stay buried for years — until it doesn’t.
A man writes a note on a 'Vegas Strong' banner on the Las Vegas Strip, after a gunman in 2017 killed 60 people at a country music festival.
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“They know lots of people were really affected by it but they don’t see it in themselves,” Winkler said. “Maybe they start noticing, ‘I’m snapping at my family more or I’m drinking more. I feel numb.'”
The center has worked with more than 10,000 people so far — survivors, first responders, their families — but estimates there are still many other people experiencing trauma who haven’t used their services. Winkler said that’s why the Vegas center is staying open for “essentially forever” — to be there for those people who need more time.
When the federal grant ended after four years, the Nevada state and Clark County government ponied up funding to keep the center open, and to extend services to other crime victims who were not part of the shooting, Winkler said.
Still, other centers have determined they've outlived their purpose and have wound down like the one in Newtown, Conn. Many of the child survivors of the 2014 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting are now graduating high school, its executive director noted.
When the world doesn’t feel safe
Kung fu master Benson Lee spars with an assistant during a self-defense course at the Monterey Park resiliency center.
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For the staff at the center in Monterey Park, staying open long-term is the goal.
The center is being run out of several rooms provided by the city at the Sierra Vista Community Center. But staff are hoping to lease a larger, permanent home to accommodate newcomers such as Maria Liang, the former owner of the Star Ballroom Dance Studio.
Liang, an avid dancer herself, wasn’t there the night of the shooting. But her brother was overseeing the Lunar New Year event at the studio, where he was injured, along with close friends and patrons she’d known for years.
“Some died and some were injured and now I decide that I close my business,” Liang said.
Liang visited the center this month to take a class for the first time. She followed the self-defense moves of kung fu instructor Benson Lee with ease. “It’s like dancing,” she explained.
Benson Lee, a kung fu master, teaches self-defense moves to Maria Liang, the former owner of the Star Dance Ballroom Studio at the Monterey Park Resiliency Center.
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Liang, switching to Mandarin, said she tried the class because the world doesn’t feel safe and she wanted to learn better awareness and ways to protect herself.
She plans to return; another class has piqued her interest. Qigong, she said brightly, is good for your body.
A place of their own
Liang had been handed a calendar of activities the night before when she attended a private event for survivors held at the community center.
Hung in the lobby were blue paper hearts honoring the shooting victims. They had been displayed outside Monterey Park City Hall on signposts for months before being moved to their permanent home with the center.
The lobby of the Sierra Vista Community Center is hung with blue hearts honoring the victims of the Monterey Park shooting.
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The lobby of the Sierra Vista Community Center is hung with blue hearts honoring the victims of the Monterey Park shooting.
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As soft music tinkled in the background, some of the survivors took part in a painting activity. Then, a few spontaneously started to dance, Loc said.
“I'm getting goosebumps,” Loc said, recalling the night. “It was really, really touching.”
But, she added, “our work is not done yet.”
“Some can go back to dancing, some cannot,” she said. “We're not here to force anybody in any direction but you can provide them with tools.”
MORE MENTAL HEALTH RESOURCES FOR THE AAPI COMMUNITY
Why now: A group of local officials and organizations, including Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs the livestream, helped organize the “Wings Over Big Bear” weekend with a commemoration ceremony Saturday and Wildlife Education Day Sunday.
Read on ... to go inside the ceremony and hear from fans.
The Big Bear community and fans of the famous bald eagles that call the valley home are coming together this weekend to honor Jackie.
A group of local, state and federal officials and organizations, including the nonprofit behind the livestream, Friends of Big Bear Valley, helped organize the “Wings Over Big Bear” weekend with a commemoration ceremony Saturday and Wildlife Education Day Sunday.
Diane Lech came up from Carlsbad and stopped by to see the overflowing Jackie memorial at Fawnskin Freedom Park. She’s been watching the livestream since 2015, when the cameras were first installed.
“And [Jackie’s] been part of my life ever since,” Lech said, her eyes welling up with tears. “It’s heartwarming to know that she had such an effect on so many people.”
Nearly two months after Jackie's death, fans are still in mourning.
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A handcrafted wooden statue of Jackie flying with a fish in her talons next to the memorial in Fawnskin Freedom Park.
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A community comes together
Vanessa Bloom, a Huntington Beach resident, and her mom are regular viewers of the eagle livestream. Bloom said the ceremony feels like a coming-together at a time when there’s so much polarization and division in the world.
“Everyone's here for a common cause,” Bloom said. “There's a lot of unity and people just being with each other in a time of tragedy, which you don't really see that often, and I think that's special.”
Artist Wes Abarca spray-painting a memorial piece for Jackie on Saturday, Oct. 3 at Bear Mountain Ski Resort.
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A plane drew a "J" and a heart in the sky over the crowd watching the ceremony.
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About 2,000 people RSVP'd to the commemoration ceremony Saturday at Bear Mountain Ski Resort, according to organizers.
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Maggie Keen, a Thousand Oaks resident, took her first trip to Big Bear in years to attend the ceremony.
“[Jackie] was just amazing,” Keen said. “Very strong, took charge of everything and was just like an incredible bird to watch her with the fledglings.”
The Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation kicked the ceremony off with several songs.
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Audience members were invited to dance along to celebration of life songs led by the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation.
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Ron Wood, better known as Woody, works at Captain John's Fawn Harbor & Marina by Dana Point Park in Fawnskin, where he points out the nest to fans daily.
“We all thought that she was going to come around and be brought back here, and, you know, it's pretty depressing,” Wood said. “Every single person still that comes is teary-eyed.”
Ron Wood holds up a framed photo of what he said is a young Jackie, along with her parents Ricky and Lucy. He usually has the popular YouTube livestream of the eagle nest playing in the background.
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Jenny Voisard, media manager for Friends of Big Bear Valley, told LAist ahead of the ceremony that the turnout shows just how the love people have for Jackie.
“A lot of people were surprised at how much they were grieving,” Voisard said. “We all still miss Jackie.”
Michael Muhm and Peggy Muhm came from Colleyville, Texas to honor Jackie in their matching eagle shirts.
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Rachel Mulpas and Randy Mulpas, a father-daughter duo, drove up from Ladera Ranch in Orange County.
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Carmina Chun and John Chun wearing "Fly High, Jackie" shirts from the Ontario Tower Buzzers' August event honoring the eagle.
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Joan Eminger was all smiles Saturday at Bear Mountain Ski Resort, sporting a Jackie shirt and pin.
Move over, beach reads. With the fall equinox behind us, we can now curl up with cozy autumn books.
Why now: Here are our recommendations of new titles coming from Barbara Kingsolver, Chad Harbach, Jasmine Guillory and more.
Goodbye and good riddance to the beach read. At least for this year, we can stop pretending that baking on the sand in the hot sun or tilted awkwardly on a damp plastic lounge chair by the pool is the ideal setting for reading. Now, with the fall equinox behind us, we can look forward and embrace the one true ideal season for reading: autumn.
Or we can not be so dramatic about it and just say that there are a lot of books coming out between now and the holidays. A few we've included in our round up are long-awaited follow ups to stunning entrances onto the literary scene. Others are big, ambitious projects. Others yet are versions of older works only now being translated into English. There are obviously some high-profile titles that we missed in the name of brevity but, hopefully, there are a few titles here that weren't on your radar before.
FICTION
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Mariner Books
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The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw (Sept. 29)
Philyaw's 2020 short story collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies felt like a discovery. Published by a small university press, the book was brave and honest in its handling of sexuality and religion. It became such a sensation in certain corners of the literary world that you really had to wonder — what the heck has Philyaw been up to? Well, we find out soon in her first full-length novel about, well, sex, religion, gossip and marriage.
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Harper
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Partita by Barbara Kingsolver (Oct. 6)
It's Kingsolver's 19th novel. Fresh off her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Demon Copperhead, one of the most prominent voices in Appalachian writing comes out with a book about a pianist on her way to classical music stardom, until that path gets knocked off kilter. Kingsolver herself originally went to college to study classical music but never truly showed her love for it in her fiction — until now.
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Scholastic Press
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It's Only Dancing by Jasmine Guillory (Oc.t 6)
Every now and then I come across a video of a cute couple doing (or attempting to do) the Dirty Dancing lift. It's a bold move with a high-risk factor for completely eating it. Well, now Jasmine Guillory's showing similar boldness. Her upcoming book — her first YA novel — is a take on Dirty Dancing. It follows a young girl and her charming dance instructor, as they try to figure out their dance steps — and each other.
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Little, Brown and Company
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The Brightness by Chad Harbach (Oct. 27)
This is the long-awaited sequel to Harbach's acclaimed 2011 baseball/campus novel The Art of Fielding. We return to Westish College — but we put down the bats and balls and, instead, focus on sexual assault, feminism, campus politics and the high costs of speaking out.
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New Directions
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Behind the Gate & Other Stories by Amparo Dávila, translated by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson (Nov. 3)
With her 2018 short story collection The Houseguest, Mexican author Amparo Dávila became a fixture in the English-speaking cult canon of weird-girl literature. Dávila died at age 92 in 2020 but a new collection of her creepy, unsettling and odd stories are coming in English this fall.
NONFICTION
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Drawn and Quarterly
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I Can't Stop Thinking About Horses and Sex by Lisa Hanawalt (Oct. 20)
A graphic memoir from Tuca & Bertie creator Lisa Hanawalt that tells you exactly what it's about in the title. And the horses bit isn't a metaphor for life or whatever, there's actually a lot in here about riding horses, taking care of horses, and how loving horses is both silly/ridiculous/expensive and, also, one of the best things in the world. OK, maybe it is a bit of a metaphor.
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New Directions
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Celeste, Daughter of the Earth and Other Early Poems by Enrique Lihn, translated byJonathan Cohen and David Unger (Oct. 20)
This book collects translated early works of the celebrated Chilean poet Enrique Lihn. And they have the full-hearted verve and drive of a younger poet. In the poem "Steadfast," the narrator speaks to the subject angrily and bitterly but ends with the lines, "I will live secretly by your side / like the corpse I've been since loving you."
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Simon Six
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Look at Me by Dustin Hoffman with Ariel Levy (Nov. 10)
Dustin Hoffman is 89 years old now. In his lifetime, he's been at the center of some of the most enduring images seared into the minds of American culture. You can picture it, can't you? Him on the bus in The Graduate. Him at the office in All The President's Men. Him and the big crocodile thing in Hook. It's a sure bet his memoir will cover at least two of those movies in depth.
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Weird Era: How Pitchfork Changed Music Forever: A Memoir by Ryan Schreiber (Dec. 1)
As the founder of the music website Pitchfork, Schreiber had a front-row seat to the changing tides of music, music distribution, music criticism, the Internet, snobbery, taste, stardom, obscurity and rating art on a scale of 1-10. The book goes into the origins of Pitchfork and offers insight into its eventual sale to Condé Nast, reminding readers that there is a real person behind that review you hated.
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Penguin Press
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The Co-Creation: How Earth Made Life and Life Made Earth by Olivia Judson (Dec. 13)
You have to give props to the big swings, and explaining the origins of life on Earth is maybe one of the biggest swings you could take. Judson is an evolutionary biologist but has spent most of her career as a science writer, explaining the world and all its inhabitants to the rest of us.
Copyright 2026 NPR
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Long Beach Unified announced Thursday it expects to close Gompers and Edison elementary schools at the end of the school year, saying the campuses are underenrolled.
Why now: It’s the district’s latest effort to consolidate resources as enrollment continues to fall districtwide. LBUSD enrollment dipped below 60,000 students this year, the first time it crossed that thresholdsince the early 1980s.
Why it matters: As enrollment declines, so does school funding, and LBUSD is taking drastic measures as operating costs exceed revenue.
Long Beach Unified announced Thursday it expects to close Gompers and Edison elementary schools at the end of the school year, saying the campuses are underenrolled.
It’s the district’s latest effort to consolidate resources as enrollment continues to fall districtwide. LBUSD enrollment dipped below 60,000 students this year, the first time it crossed that thresholdsince the early 1980s.
Why the district wants to close schools
As enrollment declines, so does school funding, and LBUSD is taking drastic measures as operating costs exceed revenue. In a recent budget report, the district said it expects to draw nearly $45 million from its reserves this school year — the third year of deficit spending. Already, the district has reduced library support, mental health resources, and certificated and classified staff. Hoover Middle School closed last year due to low enrollment, the district said. Both LBUSD and the school board have signaled that more tough cuts are on the horizon; some are already here.
“It feels like a big loss,” said school board member Juan Benitez, whose district includes Edison Elementary. Yet he added that low birth rates will continue pushing enrollment down. The district and board have a fiscal responsibility to take action — not only to balance the budget, but to ensure students receive the best learning environment possible, which is difficult to maintain at schools with low capacity, he said.
Where students and teachers would go
If the school closures are approved by the board of education, the Gompers attendance boundary will be consolidated with three nearby Lakewood elementary schools: Cleveland, Holmes and MacArthur, according to a letter the district sent to families. Edison students would attend Chavez and Oropeza elementary schools, both within a mile of Edison’s downtown campus.
If families wish to send their children to different schools, they will receive priority in the school choice process, the letters added.
The campuses will not remain vacant, Benitez said. Edison may be used as a temporary site while other schools undergo modernization projects, and additional uses will be proposed for Gompers, he said. The Child Development Center currently housed at Edison will remain there for at least the next several years, he said.
Teachers on permanent contracts at Gompers and Edison will keep their jobs in the district, said Peder Larsen, president of the teachers union, and they will get precedence in school reassignments. But they may not learn their new school sites until April, once the school transfer and assignment process is underway, he said.
Families push back
The news has hit hard for families. Ashlee Napalan, an LBUSD teacher and a parent of three children at Gompers Elementary, said the news was “heartbreaking” and surprising, especially because Gompers underwent a significant remodel last year, including the installation of a new HVAC system, as well as fresh paint and new playground equipment, she said.
She described a tight-knit community at Gompers and said her children walk to school and play with other kids at the park across the street. When she told her son, a kindergartener, the news, she said he cried all night. “We’ve been really heavily involved with the school for seven years,” she said. “It’s a huge part of our lives.”
What happens next
Some parents have already begun organizing to oppose the move. A petition to keep Gompers open accrued more than 600 signatures in one day. Some parents said they plan to speak at the school board meeting on Oct. 7 when the issue will be presented to the board as an information item. The board is expected to vote on Oct. 21. Parents at each school have been invited to informational meetings in the coming month, according to the letters sent by the district.
Benitez said he is pushing for “ongoing, constant, clear responsive communication” to the families affected by these proposed changes. “The recommendation is not being taken lightly,” he said, adding that he — and the district — will be listening closely to students’ and families’ concerns.
Congress is scrambling to show that it understands voter concerns about AI data centers and their potential impact on electricity rates. But answering the question of how much of those costs will be shouldered by residential utility customers is surprisingly difficult to answer.
Why now: On Capitol Hill this week, Republicans have been trying to push through the Ratepayer Protection Act, sponsored by Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted. The bill would have state utilities consider holding "large-load" customers responsible for the increased costs. Several other data center and AI-related bills are at various stages in the legislative process.
Ahead of the midterm elections, Congress is scrambling to show that it understands voter concerns about AI data centers and their potential impact on electricity rates. But answering the question of how much of those costs will be shouldered by residential utility customers is surprisingly difficult to answer.
That uncertainty is at the heart of a growing fight on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers advance competing proposals aimed at protecting ratepayers in a debate that often belies the complexity of the underlying economics.
On Capitol Hill this week, Republicans have been trying to push through the Ratepayer Protection Act, sponsored by Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted. The bill would have state utilities consider holding "large-load" customers responsible for the increased costs.
Husted is in a heated reelection campaign against Democrat Sherrod Brown, who lost his Senate seat in 2024. Brown has made Husted's past support of data centers in Ohio a major campaign issue. The bill easily passed the House in September with strong bipartisan support.
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer opposes the measure, saying its protections for ratepayers are voluntary. Instead, Schumer is promoting the GRID Savings Act, a similar bill authored by New Mexico Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich, which he says has more teeth.
The question of how much of the energy and grid costs are being borne by ratepayers is a complicated one and has no universal answer, experts tell NPR. They say it varies by utility and state, but that in the end residential electricity customers will pay for a share of the AI buildout.
By one estimate, Maryland customers, for example, pay somewhere around $168 to $216 more per year on their electricity bills primarily due to the data center boom.
"We're talking tens to hundreds of millions of dollars [of infrastructure] that are being built by these local utilities," says Connor Waldoch, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Grid Status, which focuses on making electricity-market data easier to access and understand. "In many cases, it is just ultimately going to end up in customers' bills."
Tracking the impact of data center growth on residential bills isn't easy, however. How much of the increase is passed on to residential customers and when, depends on utilities' power-purchasing contracts, retail rates and regulatory decisions about who pays, according to Lucy Qiu, a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.
PJM is a regional transmission organization that coordinates the electricity grid and wholesale power market across 13 states and the District of Columbia. It supplies power to Northern Virginia, home to the largest concentration of data centers in the world. PJM's Independent Market Monitor estimates that data centers have cost their 67 million ratepayers about $29 billion over roughly the past two years.
"Everyone pays those costs," says Ari Peskoe, director of the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative. "They're spread across the region to every business and resident that has an electricity meter."
An Amazon Web Services data center is shown situated near single-family homes in Stone Ridge, Va.
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How to determine who the grid infrastructure benefits?
Data center growth can push up wholesale costs of energy by increasing demand. This determines how much generating capacity utilities and regional grid operators need to secure, Qiu says. There are also costs with building new power lines, substations and other infrastructure to connect data centers to the grid. Determining how much of that exclusively serves data centers — and how much also benefits other customers — is part of the difficulty in determining who gets the bill, she says.
"It really depends on the scale of the upgrade and also how utilities are doing the accounting of that different share, whether it's being used solely by the data centers or also being shared by other customers," Qiu says.
No "single, clean number"
Even so, "a single, clean number" that applies nationwide is just not possible, Harvard's Peskoe says, because "a lot of the data about how much particular data centers are paying is hidden behind non-disclosure agreements."
Those NDAs have become a major sore spot on the local level, as residents opposed to new data centers call out local officials for the secrecy that has surrounded many deals. A study last year by the University of Mary Washington found that NDAs had been signed in 80% of Virginia localities where there were existing, approved or proposed data centers.
In an email to NPR, Jeremy L. Slayton, a spokesman for Dominion Energy, which serves Loudoun County, Va., home to about 250 data centers, said, "We recover costs for distribution and transmission infrastructure from customers."
"These assets are core to the reliable electric service we provide our customers. All costs we recover from customers are reviewed and approved by the Virginia State Corporation Commission," he said, referring to the independent state agency that regulates public utilities.
Added costs of building out in a hurry
There is still another factor at play, University of Maryland's Qiu says. The data center industry is in a hurry and waiting for new power-generation technologies doesn't seem to be in the cards. As a result, to meet the demand, utility companies will likely need to opt for less efficient power plants and those costs will be passed onto consumers over time, as well.
One other consideration is optics, Waldoch of Grid Status says. Big customers like AI data centers pay less per kilowatt hour for power than residential customers do. Think of it as a volume discount. In the current environment where 70% of Americans are worried that data centers will increase their electricity bills, Waldoch says, "If you're saying, hey, this data center is actually paying a lot less for electricity than you are, even though it matters much less to them ... it's not like that's palatable for a lot of people at this point."
Benefits of the AI buildout
But not all price increases in recent years are linked to data centers, Qiu says.
"The fuel cost ... is a very important factor," she says and some of those new substations and power lines were going to need to be replaced anyway due to things like extreme weather events.
Qiu also notes that the U.S. power grid needs upgrades to accommodate higher demand for things like electric vehicles. The AI boom "can accelerate the upgrade of the grid infrastructure," she says.
There's also evidence, Qui says, that resiliency — the ability to survive high-impact events such as extreme heat and to recover from outages — is better for people living near data centers due to the robust infrastructure those facilities require. "So if there's a data center, it actually helps … improve the local grid reliability [and] reduce the power outages," says Qui.
