The anti-datacenter movement seems so filled with propaganda (water usage despite being less than golf courses, etc) that it’s hard to believe people aren’t being influenced by some foreign state. You could build a stockyard to slaughter pipeline and get far less pushback while using way more water and having an actual negative impact to all of the surrounding area through the entirety of your operations.<p>Hats off to whoever is stoking this. It’s witchcraft trials levels of hysteria.
DC's are being used as a proxy for power and wealth disparity. Fix that. Have an actual measurable plan for general prosperity (health care, QoL, housing, you name it) and the data centers won't be a concern
The issues you listed seem intractable in the U.S., and the current NIMBYism towards data centers seems likely to make NIMBYism towards housing even worse - a number of the same arguments that were used against housing are now being used against DCs, but we’re seeing a whole new level of NIMBY tactics being tried out - I expect we will see similar city-wide/county-wide bans on multi-family housing, mass transit, mixed zoning, etc - or use of eminent domain to block housing projects, etc. if this kind of NIMBYism becomes accepted or even celebrated against DCs.<p>Or for your suggestion to “fix healthcare” - how and by whom? The solutions that those on the left push are anathema to 1 of the 2 major parties in the U.S., and the party which currently controls all of the branches of government.
Pretty much, disrupting datacenter builds is one of the few ways people can fight back against evil tech billionaires.
Backlash is just a natural consequence in a democratic society to the absolute accelerationist mindset that AI development has taken since 2022. Actions meet consequences. I mean it wasn't so long ago they were talking about wiping out all white collar work and consigning most the country to the permanent underclass. If you look at how the rest of the economy has been starved of capital to fund all this and how its contributed to inflation and job insecurity, it doesn't really take a foreign actor to spark a massive backlash.
Aesthetics are important. Everyone enjoys looking at a golf course, even non-golfers. Nobody wants to look at a datacenter.<p>My general thought is, what’s the argument for placing them in populated areas to begin with? Why dedicate land use for it in Nashville? Wouldn’t putting it 40 miles outside town work just as well? Why don’t we create development zones specifically for these things? In Dallas we have a similar thing for our distribution hub, it’s south of downtown kind of in the outskirts and in an economically struggling area. Same for industrial areas, it’s usually something that’s zoned to a particular area so residential neighborhoods aren’t really affected. It’s not land where the community may benefit more by literally anything else (sometimes even a Walmart is better than a datacenter). I assume that’s where this is all headed, cities need to roll out their long term vision of where datacenters fit into their city, if at all. Until then, it’s all these small battles and the information used by opponents doesn’t really matter. If enough people don’t want it, it should probably go somewhere else. This is not serving any community benefit so I don’t see any reason why it has to exist where the developers want it to.<p>Expecting rational opposition is actually irrational. They just don’t want it. The why is varied and probably based more on emotion than anything else.
> what’s the argument for placing them in populated areas to begin with?<p>Colos advertise their proximity to populated areas. It is desirable for physical access, latency, and connectivity.
That makes no sense: are they going to use this datacenter <i>exclusively</i> for Nashville people use? We regularly access data from datacenters thousands of kilometers away, and the latency is acceptable. Not even pro-gamers would notice the latency increase if the datacenter moved 10 kilometers further in any direction, which is virtually empty in Nashville.<p>I live in Spain, and my latency to my VPS at Germany, 3,000 kilometers away, is 40 milliseconds. Good enough. A traceroute shows that I have to pass through Madrid (400 km away), with a ping of 5 ms. Do anyone believe that moving datacenters within neighborhoods to shave additional 5 or 10 km is noticeably good for the latency, when 100 km mean extra 1 ms on average? Apparently the Nashville neighbors don't give a shit about -0.1 ms latency.<p>We have a couple of small datacenters nearby. Luckily they are somewhat isolated from where people live, because the things are noisy <i>at all times</i>, and each year they add more capacity, more refrigeration towers and more noise (all efficiency gained at the CPU/GPU level is used to increase density, not to lower consumption or cooling needs). Nobody would want to live less than 200 meters away from them.
If it’s a colo… yes, it would be primarily local customers. Data centers are not just for consumer B2C services. There’s a lot of stuff that runs in data centers that are both more important and more sensitive to latency or connectivity than video games.<p>Even for something as simple as a business that needs somewhere to run critical VDI hosts — then yes, they need low latency and somewhere that their techs can physically get to if they need to fix something.<p>You may also need interconnects to specific physical networks that are only available in certain places. You may need direct connections to partner equipment. This requires physical presence.<p>Colo space is not something you rent if a VPS is good enough for what you’re doing.
If they zoned it, then the city is saying “you will commute”. It doesn’t have to be unreasonably far away, just less convenient than a Walmart. Most people commute for work anyway, business rent storage/warehouse space in cheaper part of town than their office space, etc. Its hyperlocalness isn’t crucial to its function.
Yeah, I commute 45 minutes to mine. That’s entirely reasonable for my use case. If you’re not doing something like HFT, then being in the same metro area is fine for most purposes.<p>I was responding to why you wouldn’t want one in a different freakin country
Right? How do people not understand this? Have fun with your super-high latency when the DCs leave your city.
The signal speed in fiber is some 200k km/s. If you go 10 miles outside of a city, you are adding 0.1ms ping, and you will have dramatically fewer pitch forks.<p>The ping between New York and LA is ~70msec. Chatting with a LLM is not latency sensitive.
But if it’s a colo it’s unlikely to have many LLMs running there. The big AI datacenters are mostly purpose built.
Is this DC even for LLMs? I've not seen any sign of that.<p>Considering that the initial build out was only 10MW, it seems unlikely that was the primary usecase.
It’s not necessarily “super high” latency to connect to data centers at a distance. Whether or not it matters depends on the application, and for most consumer applications it isn’t a huge issue. For AI data centers it doesn’t really matter.
Try living next to a constant 80-100 dB hum 24x7. You’d not be complaining about people being irrational.
That depends highly on the datacenter. While a huge hyperscaler might be noisy, many datacenters are quiet enough that people don’t even know they’re there.<p>The one I host at, you can’t hear from the end of the parking lot. The coolers aren’t any noisier than the ones on other commercial buildings. These kinds of datacenters are <i>everywhere</i> and most people probably just think they are warehouse or office building.
I'm sure there are data centers that make a noise. And if you're firing up a generator that's a separate issue.<p>But the noise from computer fans and power supplies is easy to ameliorate and can be a trivial permit requirement.<p>The noise is all high-frequency which means most anything will stop it. Frankly building an earth berm around the site would kill all the noise and make it better to look at. Throw in some trees and you're done.<p>I get the water and power concerns. But (in the right locations) both are solvable. Power can be balanced with power generation (off site) especially solar and wind. Water isn't really "used" it's just necessary as a heat-sink so as long as it's available it can stay available.<p>Yes, govt should write permits carefully. And there are locations it is not suitable. But opposition to data centers in general is just hype.
Absolutely zero noise from any datacenter comes from the fans or power supplies of the equipment inside of it. The equipment is inside of the building.<p>Datacenter noise comes from the chiller units.
> The noise is all high-frequency which means most anything will stop it. Frankly building an earth berm around the site would kill all the noise and make it better to look at. Throw in some trees and you're done.<p>Have any of these data centers done this? All the ones I’ve seen haven’t even put up a sound baffling wall. If a data center’s owner has taken steps to ameliorate or completely prevent their negative externalities then opposition to them definitely looks like NIMBYism.<p>If, however, you’re just saying they _could_ prevent the problems, but then never do, I’m even more inclined to support the people telling them to fuck off.
I do not enjoy looking at a golf course. (A minigolf course is a different kettle of fish.. of course.)
> placing them in populated areas<p>The photo at the very top of the OP article shows a very low-density area. If someone was expecting to see urban-type density, it isn’t in the location shown in the photo. It's mostly trees, industrial facilities, and a train line.
A normal computer company mixes finely with residential and commercial spots: clean and quiet operation, employees can live closely, etc. A woodworking shop would be noisier. But it has to be normal, not a cryptominer or something like that.
<a href="https://amp.thenewstribune.com/news/local/community/gateway/g-news/article315967017.html" rel="nofollow">https://amp.thenewstribune.com/news/local/community/gateway/...</a>
AI datacenters have very real negative effects on the communities they are located in like noise pollution and increased power prices. If you manage to defeat the water reason then people will just start using some other reason.
The biggest externality is the electrical usage. IDK why they keep mentioning water. The AI DCs are driving huge loads to grids, and all ratepayers are being asked to pay for that. IMO if they built a solar + battery farm on grid, paid by AI DCs, there would be no significant hurdles.
I used to think it was just electricity. It <i>could</i> be just electricity, but when they try to divert hundreds of millions of gallons out of water scarce resources like the colorado river[1] in dry, <i>HOT</i> areas where water usage rises -- you can begin to understand why people are irritated. Even if you get promises of using closed systems, corporations are liars.<p>I think these corporations do a lot of harm to their own arguments.<p>[1] - <a href="https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/data-center-developer-sues-for-right-to-use-colorado-river-water-in-thirsty-california-county/" rel="nofollow">https://www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/data-center-develop...</a>
> water usage despite being less than golf courses, etc<p>This sounds like a pretty good argument against golf courses. Not sure why you think this comparison put the water consumption of DCs into perspective, to me it just puts the water consumption of golf courses into perspective.
It's also wrong. The industry is pushing this PR talking point really hard and not enough people are pushing back.<p>Per acre, data centers absolutely use way more water. But even then its apples to oranges. Golf courses use non-potable/recycled/grey water while data centers require really pure water (drinking water). The demand is also extremely concentrated in one spot instead of being disbursed. And, at least in agricultural land, 30-40% of the water used returns to the water table. With evaporative cooling, all of that water goes into the atmosphere.
Yes, we should be looking into the wasteful water use in golf courses too.
A stockyard doesn't consume into the gigawatts of power.<p>There is not a concerted effort to build thousand upon thousands of stockyards across the globe.<p>Stockyards wont increase the planets reliance of oil, since green technologies don't scale that fast. Same planet that feeling the effect of climate change quite clearly.<p>All for close to zero upside for the surrounding community. At least the stockyard would have given you cheaper meat. What are data centers going to give? Discount tokens?<p>That's why your stockyard does not have the same pushback.
> water usage despite being less than golf courses, etc<p>Golf courses are a common example of wasteful water use.
As the xAI debacle in Memphis showed, once construction begins the locality may lose the ability to enforce existing laws around e.g. noise, pollution, etc. that normally serve to contain negative externalities. (This is a side effect of the rule that people who are rich enough are immune from laws.)<p>Since more precision remedies are off the table, all that's left are gross mechanisms like bans and eminent domain.<p>Nobody sane would accede to admitting a new community member who is a priori immune to local laws.
Yes, I think bad behaviors do play a part. With any development there has to be some level of trust between the developer and community (where the community are typically represented by local govt.)<p>Once that trust is eroded it can be difficult to get things built. If you lose trust in the govt the developer won't build. If trust in the developer is lost then permits just stop.<p>And yes, I think community trust in AI data centers is very low. Perhaps some more creative approaches will be necessary in the future to build up this trust again.<p>Data centers <i>could</i> be very good neighbors. They could be built in astheticly pleasing ways. They could balance elec consumption with production. They could operate cooling and simply return "warmer water" to source.<p>Unfortunately under the current cultural circumstances none of this can be taken for granted. Corporations have (very much) lost our trust in the effort to squeeze every last dime of profit out of everything. This is the American way.
Data center water usage varies heavily by design and climate. Most data center providers are not openly publishing water usage, and when they do publish metrics they hide behind derived metrics like WUE. So I don't blame the opponents for any "hysteria".<p>When we look at data we actually have [0], we can see for example AWS data centers in Oregon consumed 284,000,000 gallons of water in 2024. By their own estimate 100% of that water is typically consumed in the summer months of June, July, August, and Sept. These are also the months that farms use the most irrigation, lawns use the most, etc. Also, keep in mind that Eastern Oregon has ideal weather for evaporative cooling (specifically low humidity). Evap cooling is used for data centers in more humid parts of the country/world and can be significantly less water efficient.<p>The average Oregon resident uses 80 gallons of water per day, or 29,200 gallons of water annually. And if you calculate it out In 2024, AWS in Oregon used water equivalent to 9726 residents' annual usage. Is that a lot? What if you add all the other data center operators in the area? I don't know. Is they causing unrealistic pressure on aquifiers and the Columbia River watershed? I don't know either. Is the trade off of water consumption for data centers worth it? I'm not really sure how to answer these questions, but I think it starts with data center operators and their utilities being more open about their usage. Today data center operators like to compare their newest DC designs to golf courses and household use and it's not showing the full story.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.oregon.gov/energy/get-involved/Documents/2026-03-27-Schilz-Amazon.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.oregon.gov/energy/get-involved/Documents/2026-03...</a>
I mean.... I don't know about where you live but where I am in the North East, electric prices have near doubled in last few years... the people are blaming AI and data centers for this, I'm sure it's not 100% the culprit but the people are looking for someone to blame and some sense that they can control it. Local zoning and municipal ordinance are one of the few ways small folk can assert power.
The public discourse for any sufficiently technical topic sounds misinformed to anyone who understands the topic well.<p>However that doesn’t mean that people don’t have real grievances, even if misplaced.
Perhaps you saw <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901</a> on here yesterday?
Conversely, the pro-data center camp seems so deeply misled about water usage. 90% of current existing data centers are indeed open loop and use evaporative cooling which use SIGNIFICANTLY more water per acre than even farmland or golf courses. Unlike residential use, where 80% of the water is reclaimed, open loop data centers allow almost all the water to evaporate. And unlike agricultural use which is dispersed over a wide area, data centers draw water from a single pipe, usually drawing from municipal sources. Golf courses usually use recycled, grey, or non-potable water while data centers need really pure water<p>The water grievances are absolutely valid and so many folks here seem to have drunk the industry koolaid on it.<p>Closed loop systems aren't exactly green either. That water has to be pumped with anti-corrosives, anti-fungals, non-stick chemicals, etc. Eventually it turns into a toxic sludge that has to be bled about once a month. They also require significantly more electricity than open loop facilities.
There is basically zero truth about the water use propaganda. Liquid cooling is closed-cycle, just like in a car.
Having a closed coolant loop and using evaporative cooling which expends water aren't mutually exclusive. It's <i>possible</i> for a datacenter to manage heat rejection by blowing air over a radiator like a car does, but it's much easier and cheaper to cool by evaporating water.<p>This can be set up using a closed coolant loop that takes heat out of the servers, then cools back down the coolant by exchanging that heat into a second separate coolant stream. That way you don't need to care as much about the purity of the water you're drawing and evaporating for evaporative cooling, only the first sealed loop gets pumped though your server racks.<p>This is the type of setup they're talking about with the much discussed xAI datacenter in Memphis, where xAI pinky swears they are definitely going to resume construction on their wastewater treatment plant [1] and use that for cooling instead. It definitely is designed to consume water and evaporate it, not a closed system like a car radiator that puts its waste heat into ≠the air with no evaporation.<p>[1] <a href="https://wreg.com/news/local/xai-to-resume-construction-on-wastewater-recycling-facility-memphis-mayor-says/" rel="nofollow">https://wreg.com/news/local/xai-to-resume-construction-on-wa...</a>
A sizable percentage of datacenters use open loop water spray towers, but the alternative, forced air exchange (ie add more giant fans) uses more electricity. It’s fairly complex to quantify which is “better” or “worse” but there exist data centers that evaporate a ton of water and send it elsewhere. (for what it’s worth I agree most of the anti datacenter hype is overblown and driven by specific poorly designed gas turbine powered installations).
I thought this too. Apparently there’s open cooling systems as well that are more efficient
The water use comes from evaporative cooling, not liquid cooling.<p>Liquid cooling pulls heat away from the chips. Evaporative cooling takes it out of the building.<p>There are alternatives, but evaporative cooling is very energy efficient.
Is this actually true?<p>Aren’t there real instances of metas data centers causing havoc for nearby residents? Light/boise pollution, contaminated water are real things
Please do provide your sources on the golf course stat you quoted.
1. A concern is not invalid merely because something else is worse.
2. Leaping to influence by foreign state is non sequitur. What evidence have you observed for that? How do I know you haven't been sent by the corporate tech elites?
3. Focussing on water strawmans the other arguments against data center imho.<p>I tend to agree with your sentiment, I think datacenters are getting more shit than they deserve, but there are better arguments to be made.<p>With patience, love and a bit of humor. X
I don't understand the water usage fears. I'm much more concerned with electricity usage.
my state power commission just passed a plan to build out 9.5 gigawatts of daily production that will be purely generated by gas turbines [1]. this is at the behest of paid lobbyists for the energy sector and commissioners who, according to open records, have received upwards of six figures from the energy company that is granted a monopoly over our energy here [2]<p>this is after a strong push for clean energy options like a nuclear plant, solar, and wind by, well everyone, even rural communities who don't want the ambient pollution of those gas plants. but given this 'demand' for data centers, that transition to clean energy is all but abandoned. each of those turbines have an estimated lifetime use of 25-30 years [3] so we'll be emitting multiple times the amount of carbon we do today until at least the 2060s and all of it funded predominantly by taxpayers<p>if you're not a believer in what people now call 'communist' politics such as believing that anthropogenic climate change is real, public health initiatives save lives, and vaccines are effective then I suppose you'd find this all very good and silly<p>regardless, claiming anti-data center organizing comes from astro-turfing is exactly the opposite of what's happening. if you went to a single hearing or were engaged with your local community politics, you'd see as much<p>[1](<a href="https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/utilities/georgia-power-plan-gas-expansion" rel="nofollow">https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/utilities/georgia-power...</a>) [2](<a href="https://energyandpolicy.org/georgia-psc-incumbents-majority-of-campaign-money-from-regulated-utility-interests/" rel="nofollow">https://energyandpolicy.org/georgia-psc-incumbents-majority-...</a>) [3](<a href="https://rmi.org/resources/you-might-be-paying-for-a-worthless-gas-plant/" rel="nofollow">https://rmi.org/resources/you-might-be-paying-for-a-worthles...</a>)
Nonsensical issues go viral all the time without any conspiracy behind them
Perhaps, just maybe, all the price hikes in electricity, city provided subsidies without any public meetings, and shady dealings (NDAs, encouraging city officials to arrest people commenting against the dcs, and so on) make people wary?<p>Maybe they remember all the promises during the 90s fiber glut that cost them billions in taxpayer funds and only resulted in thousands and thousands of miles of fiber still unused (and often even lost and forgotten!) to this day, and don't want a repeat?<p>Maybe they aren't the braindead zombies you propose and are in fact just regular humans not stupid enough to be utterly sucked into the bubble religion so many AI fanatics are babbling in tongues about?<p>Maybe they look at things like Flock and palantir and other overt fascism and want to stop the evil. Some people aren't masochist freaks and don't want to be forced to participate in the sick little fetish all the AI sycophants try to abuse them with. Could it be that?
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