If you think a sizable percentage of the American public is undecided about the ongoing construction of data centers around the country, just ask around. It is clear that many people, probably a majority, don’t want a data center anywhere near them.
That certainly is true in Southwest Mississippi, if the online Enterprise-Journal is to be believed. A recent poll on our website about whether this area should consider a data center has only 123 votes, but 80% of those responding oppose the idea. And on the paper’s Facebook page, a link to the poll last week attracted more than 150 responses, almost all of them opposed as well.
The passion of data center critics is worse than the fabled NIMBY, Not In My Back Yard, attitude that sometimes arises against new projects. The dislike and distrust of data centers is more like Not Anywhere On My Continent.
The concerns are numerous: The greedy tech bros who run these companies are not to be trusted. They just want to eliminate jobs.
The data centers are too big and too noisy. They use too much electricity, which causes shortages that raise utility prices for everyone else. They use too much water, which is badly polluted when it leaves a building.
Politicians, even pro-business Republicans, are catching up with the public mood. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declared a moratorium on data centers in his state. New York has done the same thing, and congressional Democrats support a nationwide halt to construction.
With those patterns, it’s time for some hold-on-a-moment questions about data centers. Are there any advocates? And what do they say?
Two of them have good points. One is Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review. The other is Taylor Budowich, a former Trump White House employee who now runs something called the Innovation Council.
Lowry’s recent column shot down objections about data centers’ use of electricity and water: “If we can’t tolerate operations using huge amounts of water and energy — key inputs of the Industrial Revolution — we never could have had, for instance, integrated steel mills, which sucked up an unbelievable amount of water and accounted for something like 5% of the entire country’s energy usage,” he wrote.
Lowry further noted that many Americans believe the country needs more blue-collar jobs. So why are they against exactly those jobs, at higher pay, for the construction and maintenance of data centers?
As for Budowich, it’s hard to trust anything this guy says. Never mind that President Trump’s lawyers filed more than 60 lawsuits alleging 2020 election fraud, and that judges of all backgrounds dismissed every one of them. Budowich still helped put the American Experiment at risk with $200,000 in advertising on social media to encourage protesters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
However, his recent column on The Washington Post website made good points about data centers, starting with how badly supporters of them have failed to make the case about the ways these facilities can help communities.
Budowich believes supporters need to focus on the benefits of the facilities that include local jobs and investments, and very often reduced property taxes.
Data centers, he said, should promise that “Any company that builds here will power our community — not drain it,”referring to both water and electricity. Budowich added that the newest generation of data centers “are adding power to the grid and using closed-loop cooling systems that don’t guzzle water.”
Finally, he wrote, people should be told about communities that are benefitting from data centers. He specifically mentioned Quincy, Wash., population 8,500; and Ellendale, N.D.
Which side is more correct? We really don’t know yet. But small towns continually gripe that they’re ignored. If a data center company comes looking, people should at least listen before deciding.
Data centers should “earnestly address people’s cost-of-living concerns and make the other side explain why it wants to yank back the first life preservers anybody has thrown to drowning American towns in decades,” Budowich wrote. That’s actually pretty sensible advice.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
