Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- Why don't they just buy extra land surrounding the data center to reduce noise pollution concerns?
Regardless hopefully this restarts nuclear power generation
by vatsachak - Everyone against data centers is doing cost-benefit analysis. If the data center folks want to solve this, work on that ratio. And both sides, if you please, since the perceived benefit right now is basically zero.by beej71
- Archive link: http://archive.today/0Rxl7by tolugenius
- The intense anti-DC sentiment shouldn't be surprising - NIMBYism is the only viable mechanism available to people in the US. It doesn't matter if you're worried about Glonzo or have real concerns, they must be expressed in NIMBY terms in order to be heard.
For example, imagine you're worried about what goes on inside those DCs, are worried about the lack of accountability from Big Tech and would like to see sensible consumer-protection regulations. Can you express that anywhere? Sure, you can leave random comments somewhere, but that doesn't matter. OTOH, you can actually join a local NIMBY group and slow things down. It's not what you want, but it's better than nothing. Same goes for people worried about clean energy and other issues.
- Residents of the state should get money for needing to live next to data centers and the use of their land/natural resources/etc, similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund.by neko_ranger
- Many things divide us here: Wawa or Sheetz; cheesesteaks or pierogi; Eagles or Steelers; but I very glad we could come together on this.by doublepg23
- Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.
- I can actually speak to this as someone in ruralish Pennsylvania whose town is going through one of these backlashes pretty heavily.
The major issue, at least in my neighborhood, is location more than anything else. We have a lot of industrially zoned areas that are great for data center location, and where they could be surrounded by other established industrial builds (think soda bottling plants, warehouses, transportation depos, semiconductor fabs, etc.) All the infrastructure is built out, electricity needs, etc. There is also a ton of land that exists that could be used for this purpose pretty distantly from town centers, if you can convince the gov/owners to part with it.
But despite this, the folks who want to expand data centers are instead trying to push instead into residential areas, or otherwise on land that would basically butt you up against pre-existing neighborhoods. Where I lack insight is if it's a matter of industrial property being too expensive compared to the swathes of otherwise unused land (at least that isn't used for state forests or whatnot,) or if there just literally is no room available for what they want to build out. But all the aspects of having bought your land to be in a residential area suddenly become way busy, value might go down because it's now in this weird quasi-industrial zone.
While there are legitimate concerns about the electricity/water usage, I (tinfoil hat) think that this is more of a game of influence/propaganda/state-level interest in an subject where it's easy to sow seeds of dissent. I personally think the electricity/water thing is a concern on a bigger scale than just individual utility bills, but it's blown out of proportion under that guise by conveniently cherry picking data from extreme examples. I also (more tinfoil) think that there's a lot of money changing hands since the AI boom is still growing and people are desperate to try to make a buck asap in any way possible, regardless of what may come tomorrow, so they're more willing to make a profit off of everything, but I have no legitimate proof of this.
by JimiofEden