When you have racks that are full of 4U GPU systems that pull 3-6kW each, the power requirements per rack shoot up to 60kW+(with whole rack setups blowing past 100kW). So an AI datacenter requires over 20x the power compared to what they needed in the past. This either strains the power grid near the DC or they need to create on-site power to fulfill demand, which has noise and other concerns.

I work near a datacenter and you can't hear significant noise from the outside, maybe a slight humming sound but quieter than traffic. This is a DC that has been around for over a decade and uses power from the grid since most of the loads are non-GPU based.

What’s missing from this strange conversation is discussion about how many data center proposals are near residential areas.

I tried to look for one in my state and a few surrounding areas and couldn’t find any. There was an amusing story about how data center protestors had to organize expensive bus trips to get the protesters out to the data center site because it was so remote.

There was another story about a small town without any major electricity or communication infrastructure coming together to impose a moratorium on data center construction. There were no plans to build data centers in their small town and no reason to consider it at all, but they felt so threatened that they needed to convene and put on a big show about banning it.

The social phenomenon of the data center construction protest movement is really fascinating. My assumption is that it will run its course and then be mostly dropped when the next current thing comes along.

There are some actual concerns about using natural gas instead of trying to utilize the optimal power sources or locations, but they’re mostly overshadowed by bogeyman complaints like thinking that a data center is going to end up in your backyard or water consumption that is negligible compared to golf courses and swimming pools.

The AI data centers consume a lot more power, and thus generate a lot more heat(equals cooling noise) per square meter.

This is the reason why it's a new problem right now.

Edit: autocorrect used breasts instead of beasts.

Ironically, There’s enough issues with the DC buildout going on that even with 100% public opinion support it would still be significantly delayed. The behind the meter power generation isn’t going well. There’s only so many gas fired turbines on the market. And connecting a DC to an established grid isn’t like clicking a button in AWS no matter how much money you have.

ETA: I would rather no data centers be built, but my point is if we have to, let’s minimize the number of people who are affected. Offer to move them if need be.

My wacky idea was that datacenters should be built on EPA superfund sites. It becomes a win-win. Datacenter gets land that humans cannot occupy, helps/funds partial cleanup, slaps a big ass concrete building down on top of the rest of the mess and kills two birds with one stone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites

Also thoughts of mine recently: why are we not doing subterranean datacenters, why are we not doing tall/skinny skyscraper like datacenters (versus enormous sprawling warehouse-style).

1. Don't build loud machines across the street from someone's house. 2. Don't drive up water/electricity bills by pulling from the municipal grid. 3. Don't burn the earth with CO2. 4. Don't facilitate techno-fascist surveillance. 5. Pay a lot of taxes.

But, when I see people complain about data centers, I usually see a spiral of rage-bait based on mis-framing, conjecture and repeating stuff others simply made up to get everyone mad. The online discussion tone is reaching a shrieking pink-froth level.

What I'm finding in my lazy research on the subject is that recent and planned datacenters

1. Are exceedingly rarely built where anyone can hear them. But, occasionally are. Thus ragebait articles. 2. Pull from muni grids for small scale centers. But, the hyperscalers are independent. 3. Hyperscalers are burning way too much natural gas. That's bad. But, not using nearly as much water as people think. That's good. 4. Techno-fascist surveillance doesn't need 1000s of datacenters. Just a handful off in the corner is plenty. 5. Datacenters usually are paying a lot of taxes. I think this drives the majority of the push from politicians. And, there's a minority from corruption.

Frankly, the biggest issue folks should be pushing for is to require hyperscalers build out solar power instead of natural gas. That will be a hard fight because it requires more up-front time and investment. From there, ensuring small scale centers don't affect people's bills is a good fight. But, passing laws to ban datacenters seems performative compared to passing laws to regulate their power and water impact.

But I also feel there needs to be an assertion that if you own the land it's your property and you're free to do most things with it, safely and politely. This is about property rights and freedoms.

You have to be fair on this though. The time to ban something is before they start talking about doing it, not after. Being ahead of the game is never a bad thing, especially when small towns are so easily exploited due to income and infrastructure. They just can't afford long legal battles.

And the current plan - building a data center in Canaan Valley - is a whopper... 785 MW natural gas power plant on site with diesel generator backups (solely for the data center, not sold back to grid), 500+ acres of land, 2 million sqft initial building space, air quality impact assessment by the state is heavily redacted, $4 billion price tag.

All right next to one of DC's most popular outdoor/skiing recreation areas. The DC would loom over the two towns that support the entire region.

What bothers me is clearing forests, sometimes even protected forests with the idea that they'll ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

It's partly about people's nominal objections, but mostly an attempt to hold them hostage to extract some energy bill subsidies (and general cost of living relief).

Suburbs cannot continue to pay for their infrastructure without drastically increasing taxes or finding new sources of income.

How did they get in?

Ambient noise must be contained, excess heat must be mitigated, free hot water must be provided to nearby buildings. etc. Also this is a city's opportunity to do something like assess penalty tax points. (ie, datacenter usage tax, just like we do to hotels)

A sane municipality will require sound mitigation on generators, chillers, and other loud equipment. Sure, there are shitty places that don’t take care of their citizens that will let you run natural gas turbines to generate power, but it’s possible to contain the bad effects of data centers with local and state regulations.

I’ll take a data center that evaporates water to replace the iron casting foundry in my neighborhood any day.

This comes cross as unbelievable, and at worst a fantastical statement, as someone who lives in Northern Virginia and is effectively watching the Datacenter battle unfold from the front lines, and dealing with the local politics and electricity costs rising at a precipitous rate.

Our electricity bill has doubled. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors want to erect “Statue of Liberty” sized power transmission lines, and those that want data centers are doing their damndest to somehow claim that they’re not responsible for the rise in the cost of utilities and shouldn’t be held responsible for it.

Part of the reason people care about Datacenters now is that they’re starting to litter the landscape, take resources from local municipalities, and raise costs for everyone involved, whereas previously there were not enough of them to really move the needle as being a problem.

Folks care because their bottom line is impacted in a time when it’s already hard to make ends meet every month due to rising costs of food, gas, and utilities, not because of some unnamed boogeyman in the form of a “nation state competitor”.

This isn't true. People were starting to mobilize against crypto datacenters in the late 2010s and early 2020s^[1][2], long before the current AI-fueled building frenzy.

> I think there’s a lot of social media influence from nation state competitors going on to try and slow SOTA development in the US.

It's fairly well documented that this is happening to some degree, but as above, foreign agents didn't conjure the anti-datacenter movement out of nothing. It's a fact that if the average crypto or AI datacenter moves in next door to you, there's a good chance it's going to crash your quality of life and the value of your property, and all in service of making a few fantastically rich guys even richer. Also, they are the same guys building a machine that they claim is going to destroy your livelihood. You don't need foreign agents to engineer a backlash here.

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/bitcoins-intensive-energy-dem... [2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/09/texas-hood-county-cr...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/husband-code-pink-founder-nevil...

Previous coverage of Singham, who coincidentally is married to a co-founder of Code Pink:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-...

Not saying these are correct and are proof, but this isn't some fringe concern from the MAGA crowd or something. It would also be a logical response on China's part to the US working to block them from getting GPUs, processor tech, etc.

Data centers being directly tied to increases in our power bills.

Or CEOs talking about how they're going to get to fire everyone because of AI.

Or social media raising the political temperature.

Or all of them combined. Tech has never been so intolerable across the board.

"These AI people are getting rich selling unicorn farts while I'm on the same pay and everything is more expensive, fuck them".

I think the biggest change in public sentiment in datacenters is a reaction to the extreme scale they're being deployed at these days. They're really vastly unlike datacenters of the past. The power densities are so much higher, they're so much larger, and they're getting vastly more environmental waivers and tax subsidies than ever before.

A quiet, average-sized warehouse-like building in an industrial area with a big power substation next to it often didn't bother a lot of people. A giant monster of a building being built in what was previously people's backyards with howling on-site power generation that got installed without any kind of air quality reviews because they're allegedly "temporary" and starts sucking the groudwater dry is a whole different story.

This is a datacenter: https://maps.app.goo.gl/pzSsUHXPaUuLGaDa9 I doubt many people even know its a datacenter. Its pretty much any other office building.

This is also a datacenter. I imagine just about everyone living nearby knows its a datacenter. https://maps.app.goo.gl/wR4NgcWQVhJAy5Gy6

Now, don't get me wrong, I do agree there's a lot of social media frenzy in reaction to all datacenters. There are a lot of datacenters around me, and it seems like roughly nobody cared when they were built. They've been there for years, some have been operational for decades. Suddenly now, lots of people have a problem with all of them.

Society hasn't felt the very real effects of data centers until recently. Power supply being short meant that residential customers have had to pick up the tab for heavy industrial users. We've started to learn just how bad all those dams we built are for the environment and many of them are tied to data center money. Elon Musk waltzed into Memphis and stood up a natural gas data center that has basically poisoned the surrounding area.

Maybe nation state actors are helping, that can always be true. It is also true that the American people are starting to realize they've been had many times over and are just starting to ask for a better deal. I think we should listen.

There's no need to invent some malign foreign conspirator to generate unpopularity for this stuff. No, the AI companies are led by unpopular CEOs, who are making unpopular statements (almost cartoonishly so). And opposing a data center is the kind of action that regular people, upset about this sort of stuff, feel that they can actually meaningfully effect. So of course it was going to balloon like it has.

No sign of datacenter activity at the local 4-H club either. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the commie brainwashed American citizens who are wrong.

None of this NIMBYism is about the datacenter itself, it's all a protest against AI making the economy really shitty for them.

It's the age old problem. The people in the cities cry that there are no jobs and the rural businesses cry that they can't find anyone to hire, with no great resolution as the businesses cannot afford to move into the city and the people don't want to travel to the boonies.

However, in this case, these data centers are so well capitalized that they can afford to move them into the cities right beside where the workers are located.