Data centers trigger voter backlash

These companies aren't coming in, buying property at market rates, and developing it with existing infrastructure under current zoning laws. They usually want tax breaks, major infrastructure changes, and other accommodations and guarantees. It's completely reasonable for people to want a dialog with their representatives before those kinds of arrangements are made with a company on their behalf. And it's entirely reasonable for them to vote out reps that are overly accommodating.

I live in an historic district. I had to attend a public meeting a couple years ago to get approval to change a lamp post. It is perfectly reasonable to ask tech companies to show up and defend massive projects to the public.

In general yes, but a datacenter is to many people a categorically different kind of development because they oppose AI companies. The first datacenter should trigger a lengthy discussion and create rules that apply to all further datacenters.

Yes, rules are absolutely necessary. And community engagement is also essential. Community input might be tiring, frustrating, and the like but people get to speak as part of the process and because they have a right to.

Is this why you're in the minority?

"Lengthy community dialogue" is your assumption

in a lot of cases, the leaders of the communities are not following the rules. (see the ppl talking about ndas and such)

in any case, this isn't like "oh we don't want to build an apartment building because it might drop the value of a single family home halfway across town."

it isn't even like "we want to build this train line which will have some negative externalities but the positive effects (and externalities) are worth taking a hit in some areas"

the problems with the datacenters are that like (1) the service its providing (LLMs) has dubious societal value, (2) the direct negative effects such as noise pollution and such have been pretty well documented, (3) the indirect negative effects like massive strain on infra and (4) the people pushing them most heavily are effectively attempting to invade the communities, peddle conspiracy theories about "china" being behind the opposition, and demand to be specially treated because they were bankrolled by big tech, etc.

some people when this topic come up act like anyone opposed is some nimby who hates societal progress or smth and who is super concerned about that their home estimate might go down. but like communities do recognize the need for zoning and restricting certain things being built.

you need the thing being built to both (a) actually be a good that helps the community (or have a very very good reason why some damage to the community is justifiable (datacenter projects generally don't) and (b) need to contain negative externalities (which is why we don't put the chemical plant next to the elementary school even if it's the most economic option). people recognize these things on some level.

That'd pretty much defeat the point of having local government. If politicians can't get their hand in the cookie jar, what's the point?

That's it right there. Rules, not deals.

This devolves into NIMBY.

> Fun part was that those apartments/hotels wouldn’t hire locals but rather people who would drive like 20-30 km away.

This is also true for data centers. They tell you there will be new jobs, but what they don't tell you is the people working there will be employed by an established contractor and driving in from the nearest metro area, not the locals.

You live in a touristy area because you have a tourism-related job, right?

Because where are the tourists supposed to stay if there's no hotels?

Some information is legally required for them to disclose, if they’re acting in their official capacity. I feel like development on public land is too big to hide.

So what are the topics people should be able to vote on? I don't think people have the necessary credentials to vote on immigration, drug price regulation, social media regulation? Why let people vote at all, they don't know anything apparently.

I mean, why do we let people without property vote in the first place? It's really only people with a vested interest who have something at stake.

So many of these conversations come back to the problem of privatized gains and socialized losses.

Most things that create value have externalities. I kill the moss on my roof, then it rains and the chemicals go into the stream, then you try to go fishing and get skunked. I exerted my freedom as a private property owner and got the benefits; you paid for the drawbacks. We're all pulling from the same pile of resources, and the Earth doesn't care where your picket fence is.

Data centers incur expensive externalities and you're asking the general public to bear those costs -- or "pay those taxes," if that resonates more. I suppose NIMBYism is part of it, but we're not talking about ugly condos here, we're talking about towns running out of electricity: https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-....

This may come as a surprise to you, but people like living in pleasant surroundings.

Just because I own the land does not mean I can open an abattoir next to an elementary school.

Using land in different ways results in externalities that affect those around it.

The people of a community should have some right to protect themselves from those externalities. How that happens in practice is a deeply flawed, messy, ugly process, but collectively deciding where to draw the line is part of living together as a community.

> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property

Yes, I believe that’s called “society” and while we are all very disappointed about your personal liberties I’m afraid some compromises had to be made to allow people other than you to have property rights too.

Your argument makes sense until you have a horrible neighbor. You can see it in action in a state like Montana which to my knowledge prohibits housing covenants. Want to park 12 cars that are rusting in your front yard? Do it! Neighbors can't do anything about it. But that does have the effect of lowering property value and degrading the neighborhood.

NIMBYism has been popular for a long time. People really do want datacenters (or at least, the things that having datacenters enable).. they just want them somewhere else.

> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me.

Would you like me to buy the lot next to your house and set up a 3000W sound system pumping noise music 24 hours directly at your bedroom? Because that's what you're arguing for.

Strong private property rights have to come with some protections against others' externalities - otherwise your property is harmed.

Amen, NIMBYs have ruined this country. Abolish zoning laws and nuke the suburbs, yeeclaw!

Zoning is a promise from the government 'invest in a house (which is most people's largest investment in life) here and we guaranty we will work on our side to make sure it is fit for purpose (a good place to live/you won't lose money).'.

These private property owners you are concerned about normally bought the land with these difficulties you are worried about priced in to the land's value. Why should to government hand them free money in the form of not enforcing what has been priced into the land value?

Are you from Texas? Because Texas is what you get with a policy like that.

> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property

If the data center existed in a vaccum, with no inputs or outputs, this argument would hold some weight.

Instead, they stress limited water supplies, cause power shortages, increase GHG emissions (which we, the public ultimately have to pay for, either through mitigation or dealing with the damage after the fact).

Oh, and also they may well have negative externalities to employment. They definitely have negative externalities to communication, the internet has been flooded with AIshit.

> People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood

So... iron smeltery next door for you then? Acid rain?

Come on. There is reasonable concern for property rights and civil coexistence and then there's Randian Libertarian Claptrap, and you've hopped right into the deep end.

YES, government has a clear and obvious interest, as a matter of principle, in the regulation of land use and development. This doesn't change just because you think the government made a wrong decision in a particular instance. The solution is to fix the government. Go vote for datacenter candidates. Seems like no one else is.

I think it's less about what data centers are and more about what they represent.

* The lack of care of governments of the people's will: they're opposed nearly everywhere but city governments get them done anyway, oftentimes while ignoring more important local problems

* The intrusion of the wealthy/big tech into people's lives. Large tech companies tend to be like insurance companies: they just appear out of the ether of daily life, and make your life worse.

* The ongoing selling out of America to the wealthy: the rich can do, buy, or build whatever they want. Regular people have to just deal with it.

I'm just saying a lot of these I expect we're going to start seeing more direct opposition to from local activists. And a lot of these areas have high rates of gun ownership.

It's the local v. federal thing. The US has been suffering from this for a while, as has Germany. The EU, too, is suffering from this.

The local politician's thinking is thusly:

- Datacenters are going to happen somewhere. And when this inevitably occurs, jobs everywhere, including here, will disappear. There is nothing I can do about that. It's as baked into my assumptions about the near future, as is the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow.

- If I allow the datacenter to happen here then while the builders are here they might buy some stuff locally for the build, and after they are done, the datacenter will employ literally a handful of people to guard and maintain the place. Not much of a gain, but, hey, the alternative is that I have nothing at all.

In other words, the 'competition' aspect between states / bundeslander / EU countries is causing these entities to race to the bottom together.

The solution is... not to do that. As somebody living in a country that doesn't suffer from this particular malady (The Netherlands, which does have provinces, and provinces work in reverse from states: The only rights they have are ones explicitly allotted to them by the state; The Netherlands is not a 'federation of provinces', whereas the US is a 'federation of states', Germany is a 'federation of bundleslander', and the EU is a federation of countries).

It means a province in The Netherlands cannot just offer a would be major company some ridiculous boon to come settle in their province at the cost of other provinces, because provinces in The Netherlands do not have the right to dictate e.g. tax rates, and even any infra project they would do requires permission (and funds) from the 'federal level' (the country).

It's been going on for ten years and there have been nada, zero, zilch solutions to the problem. Thus my stance remains: You have to put a stop to that. The problem is, of course, this requires an entity that currently has some power (namely: states / bundeslander / EU countries) to voluntarily give up power to the federated entity that sits 'above' them, and it's always difficult to convince an entity with power to voluntarily relinquish it.

Still, that's the job.

So? Since when is there a floor for the number of jobs a business has to create? Suzies Tanning Salon uses a lot of energy but only employs 3 people.

More electricity than water around here—rates going up gets everyone’s attention—but there’s nothing supposedly about the water use: data centers don’t consume the water permanently but they still put stress on systems which weren’t designed for the extra volume, pushing requests for expensive expansion projects, and there can be other problems: a colleague mentioned his family back home recently learned that the extra water circulation was spreading a groundwater pollution plume substantially faster, affecting well water users in the area. Since these things tend not to contribute many jobs, there isn’t much to balance out the bad news for communities.

Why is water so inexpensive? Shouldn’t the price per gallon increase exponentially? It seems like it shouldn’t be that difficult to come up with curves so that typical households pay very little for water and the big users pay a lot for water.

Box elder is particularly egregious. 9GW of new natural gas burning power concentrated in 1 location in a state that already suffers from poor air quality.

(I'm also in Utah)

I'll second this observation, as well as add that apart from AI slop most people around here associate the data center push with the sudden proliferation of Flock cameras at every major intersection and along every highway. Provo defeated a major data center project that was going into an empty industrial park, arguably the kind of place that would fit that sort of development. The actual cost-benefit calculation for most people is heavily weighted towards the negative and this should not continue to surprise people. The perceived downside with no upside is just going to get worse if the government gatekeeps the most useful models.

"Some regions" being a a bit of an understatement, the US west and southwest are experiencing (or about to experience) severe water shortages and disruption due to the current water shortages.

When the AI bubble pops. It will, and it will be glorious.

You kid, but Bezos said practically the same thing. That human need for water shouldn't hold AI back.

> people on UBI are also rather useless

UBI is going to get us a lot more artists of all kinds.

I agree with your point broadly, even the cynicism, but the following sticks in my craw:

> people on UBI are also rather useless

The point of life is not “that you be useful to the wealthy”.

I’ve noticed that people conflate being anti data center with being anti AI.

I don’t have any faith in the current crop of gen AI. I think it’s junk. I don’t think it’s replacing humans in drives. I can barely get it to refactor Sass code into a mixin.

Even if the AI bubble pops the world isn’t going to need fewer data centers.

If a speculator wants to create a bunch of construction jobs, build a site in a region with the power, water, climate to do so responsibly, and give us a bunch of money in property taxes. I’m for it.

I don’t care if his company folds and he loses his shirt. Someone will operate the data center.

They can’t get back the money they injected into the community during construction.

Eat while there’s food.

“Everyone in that neighborhood goes jobless”?

The US unemployment rate is currently 4.3%.

No, I know why they’re angry.

Hell, I don’t even use gen AI, I still think it’s unreliable junk.

However, most of the things that the people in my community are concerned about don’t apply to our region specifically. We’re actually in a position to benefit GREATLY. It’s useful to have that conversation.

2008 is apples vs oranges. The proposed data center site is across the street from the dump, just south of the airport. It’s zoned for heavy industrial use.

Literally anything that they could build there other than a data center would have a greater negative impact on the environment and a far less positive economic impact.

I could build a concrete crushing plant there.

> I’m sure you certainly did in 08, as people lost their homes.

It's funny that this is such a common takeaway from 2008. The bankers are bad because people lost their homes.

It's the right guilty party and the right victim but not the right crime.

The bad thing was bankers irresponsibly putting those people in homes in the first place. The people were always going to lose those homes because they couldn't afford them.

Nobody's shutting off those 150 homes to take their electricity, though. They have to buy it themselves. Lots of industrial things take tons of energy, from metal smelting to food production.

Oh, and datacenters alone shouldn't even make electricity more expensive, because rates are regulated. The state regulators have to approve rate raises. Now, are the regulators a bunch of stooges captured by the utilities who always do their bidding? Probably! But that's a good reason to throw your corrupt state politicians out of office and hopefully run them out of town on a rail -- not to protest datacenters.

> One refrigerator sized rack at a datacenter takes as much power as 150 homes

Is this supposed to scare me or something? I can't even fathom the actual point you are trying to make if it doesn't involve me having an emotional response to this statement.

> One refrigerator sized rack at a datacenter takes as much power as 150 homes

Are you counting the externalized data center use of the people in that house?

That’s not the core of the argument. You know that.

I’m putting things into perspective for people who are terrified that the last drops of their potable water and going to be used to generate a meme video.

I don’t defend every data center everywhere. I’m talking about the proposed data center about 11 miles from my door.

In my area we have a nuclear generating station 16 miles from that site. It sells 80-85% of all power generate wholesale to other markets. We have the power infrastructure here.

The problem is that we don’t correctly price pollution: it’d be one thing if this boom meant acres of solar panels and wind turbines getting greenlit but in practice it means keeping some dirty plants online and building out new pollution capacity, sometimes completely illegally like what happened in Memphis.

All of this would go away overnight if we taxed carbon.

> in the long term

being the key phrase. Until we get to that long term, the less price sensitve buyer can buy up all available goods.

for example, all of the gas turbines needed to generate electricity.

so it is impossible to invest in capacity for non-datacenter uses, because the raw ingredients have already been bought up by the data centers.

effectively, at current rate of investment, > 90% of investment into new power generation goes to data centers. That doesn't leave much for any kind of other economic growth, since all of our economic growth depends on electricity.

It's quite amusing how easily people fall into the trap of Malthusianism when talking about water/electricity consumption of certain industries.

> In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers.

The same should apply to memory and GPU manufacturers and yet I have seen no commitments from them to increase supply, so the end result is that consumer electronics are becoming ever more expensive compared to even just a year ago. That doesn't feel like a working economy to me.

Don't all states have public utility commissions that regulate electricity provisioning? I don't know if the market has much to do with anything since it's all government regulation.

You're right, but that doesn't mean opinions will evolve towards viewing the technology more positively. With AI, it's increasingly the opposite.

"The beatings will continue until opinions evolve."

Again misleading. they bring back more in tax than the subsidies.

I'm pointing out there are two groups blaming each other. I don't know which is right.

But I absolutely believe that social media's agenda is a directed agenda.

Even OpenAI believes it, and found concrete evidence: https://openai.com/index/prc-linked-influence-operations-ai-...

I don't think so. Look at these numbers:

  | Year | Capacity (GW) | Construction Spending |
  | 2015 | 0.2 – 0.3 GW  | $1.8 Billion |
  | 2016 | 0.3 – 0.4 GW  | $2.2 Billion |
  | 2017 | 0.4 – 0.5 GW  | $3.1 Billion |
  | 2018 | 0.5 – 0.6 GW  | $4.5 Billion |
  | 2019 | 0.6 – 0.7 GW  | $6.2 Billion |
  | 2020 | 0.8 – 1.0 GW  | $8.0 Billion |
  | 2021 | 1.2 – 1.5 GW  | $10.0 Billion |
  | 2022 | 2.0 – 2.5 GW  | $15.0 Billion |
  | 2023 | 3.5 – 4.0 GW  | $20.0 Billion |
  | 2024 | 6.4 GW        | $35.0 Billion |
  | 2025 | 8.5 GW        | $46.0 Billion |
  | 2026 | 13.6 GW       | $50.7 Billion |

2026 figures represent full-year capacity projections and annualized construction spending rates.

There is absolutely no way that increase was planned due to precisely planned for capacity. It's speculation.

why do we give a shit what voters think should happen on someone else's property again?

Their taxes and cost of living goes up, oh wait

That's true, but I also see a lot of infrastructure projects that get gummed up or even canceled by NIMBYs, industry incumbents, and general obstructionism that would've happened had they been undertaken with the same bull-in-china-shop approach these datacenter projects tend to take.

> AI benefits everyone while also benefitting the billionaires - even disproportionately.

Source?

Also, you seem to be (probably intentionally) mixing up who's an elite and who's not. The people controlling and profiting from AI companies and their ilk are elites. The average person who's livelihood is at risk is not an elite, not matter how much you may try to spin it.

they are only releasing open weight models to damage the closed off US AI corpos.

while the next GLM model may get a similar open release, I doubt the one after that will.

so what makes you think that you aren't responding to a bot intending to sway your opinion by giving a shape to your preconceived notions so that your position crystallizes further, right now?

You think this is reasonable? The person is just trying to conserve their job. It’s an act of self preservation and the opposite of virtue. And it’s not even historically accurate.

That may not be true for much longer given the (disappointing) trend

2020 - 79 : 20 (renewables : fossil fuel)

2026 - 57 : 42

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2026/04/03/americans-shi...

"Privatize gains, socialize losses"

This pretty much spells out exactly my big problem with datacenters. I don't care if you build a huge datacenter several miles away from my home. What I do care about is utilities cranking up the price 3x because of "capacity issues" afterwards because said datacenter now uses more power than the entire district I live in

I think your view is too simplistic and falls easily into the populist narrative so you end up mislabelling me as being invested.

You are again doing the thing I flagged in my original comment - the left right or progressive/conservative axis is not useful anymore. As an example: a lot of tech CEO's were originally against Trump but ended up caving precisely because the left became anti-technology broadly.

From experience and anecdotes, tech and AI optimism cross cuts into the old axis. Examples

1. third world countries are way more optimistic about AI than first world

2. many celebs (for the lack of better word) are pro AI - look at Redis, Django, NodeJS, Github

3. the existence of Effective Altruism itself should prove that this axis is useless - EA was largely leftist and support democrats while also being "pro" AI like Anthropic is mostly made from the EA cult

The nomenclature also doesn't make sense to me. Why would conservatives not conserve but rather push for progress? What are conservatives conserving instead? The academic consensus is that technology determines the societal culture and if conservatives wanted to conserve anything, they would conserve technology first wouldn't they?