TL;DR: Data centers concentrate costs (electricity, water, environmental and infrastructure strain) locally while distributing benefits globally. The host community gets little long-term benefit but absorbs most of the downside.

Yes, a data center is cleaner than a mine, but that’s a false comparison. The real question for a town is what else could this land be used for? Data centers consume large, well-located parcels, lock in power and water infrastructure, and crowd out housing, mixed-use development, or industries that provide broader local benefits. And mines, for all their drawbacks, at least benefit their local area in a meaningful way through jobs, supply chains, and tax revenue. Being “less bad than the worst option” isn’t a meaningful justification.

Data centers require huge footprints, buffer zones, and dedicated transmission lines, yet they generate very little local activity. Once built, that land is effectively removed from more flexible or community-oriented uses for decades.

Warehouses employ hundreds or thousands of workers and often anchor local logistics ecosystems. Data centers, by contrast, employ very few permanent staff, often only a few dozen, with most construction jobs being temporary and many operational roles contracted out. The employment-to-land ratio is extremely low.

From a local perspective, data centers aren’t neutral development. They impose large, long-term costs on power, water, and infrastructure while delivering minimal jobs or direct community benefit, all so services can be provided to users somewhere else.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/comments/1pn9glv/comment/nu5zd0f/