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I keep reading headlines about local communities opposing data centers
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:19 pm
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:19 pm
What are the legitimate concerns about their impact?
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:21 pm to Wildcat1996
Resource Hogs. Higher utility bills.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:21 pm to Wildcat1996
From what I have read, they are an extreme drain on energy and water resources.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:22 pm to Wildcat1996
reliability and price of electricity and water. Those are the biggest issues.
Lesser issues are noise because of the massive amounts of generators that need to be exercised regularly regardless of electrical utility reliability.
Lesser issues are noise because of the massive amounts of generators that need to be exercised regularly regardless of electrical utility reliability.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:22 pm to TankBoys32
quote:
From what I have read, they are an extreme drain on energy and water resources.
Energy, potentially. Water, no.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:23 pm to SallysHuman
quote:
Resource Hogs. Higher utility bills.
And they're very loud.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:24 pm to Wildcat1996
quote:
I keep reading headlines about local communities opposing data centers
Have you ever thought to read beyond the headlines?
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:25 pm to Stealth Matrix
quote:
And they're very loud.
Also no.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:26 pm to Stealth Matrix
And they add essentially 0 full time jobs as they are largely self-sufficient. Once the construction boom is gone there no long-term real employment gain for the community.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:26 pm to Wildcat1996
water, first last and always
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:27 pm to Centinel
quote:
Water, no.
The water stuff is weird. Most of it is just evaporated back into the atmosphere.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:27 pm to Wildcat1996
I think the resource argument is legit, but it's overlaid on top of more latent concerns - something that costs a ton, might consume a lot of space and resources won't generate much in terms of community profit or employ very many people.
And, that's again on top of the substrate of AI being arguably a net negative for labor/opportunity for most communities. So you have this behemoth thing that wants to live in your community and provide minimal return, mostly benefitting and profiting people far away from here. And for many, there isn't even some sense of grander/macro benefit.
And, that's again on top of the substrate of AI being arguably a net negative for labor/opportunity for most communities. So you have this behemoth thing that wants to live in your community and provide minimal return, mostly benefitting and profiting people far away from here. And for many, there isn't even some sense of grander/macro benefit.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:28 pm to slackster
quote:
The water stuff is weird. Most of it is just evaporated back into the atmosphere.
This isn't even accurate anymore with closed-loop systems.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:31 pm to Wildcat1996
Because we want to keep the Louisiana tradition of oil dependency. 
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:32 pm to Wildcat1996
quote:
they are an extreme drain on energy and water resources
Unlike the oil refineries.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:33 pm to OleVaught14
10 years of 4k+ workers and 100s of millions into the communities definitely isn't worth the tens of people that have to see lights and have bad traffic in these insanely rural areas.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:35 pm to TigerMan327
I just enjoy the irony of the folks that are hard-core against these data centers furiously using AI to come up with arguments against said data centers. 
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:35 pm to Wildcat1996
Everybody who is complaining about data centers use Chat GPT, Grok, X, Google or YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Netflix, phone apps every single day. Until they cut all of that out of their lives, they have no room to bitch and moan about data centers. fricking hiprocrites
This post was edited on 4/7/26 at 2:40 pm
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:35 pm to slackster
quote:
The water stuff is weird. Most of it is just evaporated back into the atmosphere.
No, it gets put right back into the body of water it came from, only a few degrees warmer.
Unless they're using a cooling tower, and most don't. With a cooling tower it evaporates.
Posted on 4/7/26 at 2:36 pm to Centinel
quote:
This isn't even accurate anymore with closed-loop systems.
It’s still very much accurate for existing data centers, and it’s still the case for most of the electricity generation that is needed.
When discussing the resource consumption much of it revolves around the totality of resources, not just those used at the facility.
That being said, I don’t believe the water issues are a big deal.
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