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Comment by nzach | Hacker News Reader

I find it really odd this recent push for discussions around the development of new datacenters.

There is a plan for constructing a new high-capacity datacenter [edit: near my city]. And a lot of discussions in the media are done through an emotional tone around water and electricity usage.

The media generally frames it as if installing a new datacenter would put the neighbors in risk of not having water or electricity. I'm not arguing that a datacenter doesn't bring any problems, everything has pros and cons.

Both sides seems to be using bad faith/misleading arguments, and I thinks that's really bad because we end up with solutions and agreements that don't improve the lives of the people affected by these new developments.

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Most new datacenters are powered with gas turbines (because utility grid connections are slow to deploy) and that'll surely affect everyone nearby.

One went in 1/4 mile from my home a couple years ago. I ignored the notices of development because I thought it was far enough that it wouldn't affect me, but it blocks the view of the mountains that I used to enjoy, and sometimes I can hear noise from its cooling system (I assume).

I wish I'd known what was coming, and gone to the meetings to oppose it.

Large buildings 1000 feet from you are going to have some impact, but your complaint has little to with being a data center specifically. They could have put in a large warehouse and your view gotten blocked just the same, similarly the noise from the cooling system can be managed well or poorly on any building.

usually large warehouses will appear where there’s good highway connections and lots of cheap unskilled labour. A DC might catch a lot of people “in the sticks” by surprise.

Hopefully we will emerge from this with a legislative framework that says "fuck your view"

I appreciate that my view isn't the only consideration for that kind of decision, but when a new building goes up much larger than anything else in the area, and affects the skyline for thousands of people, I think that should be one of the considerations.

As long as it includes compensation for lowering house prices, of course!

Let’s use a little logic. What are the “both sides” here? Megacorps with billions vs “local media”? Citizens?

Yes, that’s a balanced equation.

Now, do we have any evidence to back complaints?

Lack of water, unclean water due to data centers:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

Data centers causing energy prices to increase:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-elec...

Data center natural gas generators flooding communities with pollution:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...

Yes, “both sides”.

What I'm trying to say is that everything we build has positive and negative effects in our society. And if we want to create a better society we need to have a good understanding of these effects.

I think your article about 'Lack of water, unclean water due to data centers' is a good example of bad faith arguments. It start the article talking about someone that lost access to their private well after a datacenter was constructed. This article don't do it, but I've se people go from arguments like this (a specific water-related disruption) to 'thousands of residencies will loose access to water'.

What strikes me as odd is the fact that datacenters aren't all that special when compared to other infrastructure projects(roads, warehouses, hospitals, power plants, garbage disposal, water dams, ...) but the way we are discussing it seems unique. For every other infrastructure project the discussion seems to be 'how do we make sure that X, Y and Z won't be a problem for the society?'. But when it comes to datacenters it becomes 'datacenters are bad and we should not build them', which seems bad way to approach this issue.

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