Now do this for housing, new sources of water anything a person younger than 40 would need and you basically get a state full of retirees..and oh would you look at that! [3].
Now the question is, why wouldn't all states eventually do this with the way our population pyramid is looking? It's basically rabid conservation and tragedy of the commons writ large.
[1]: https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2025-04-08/bill-removin...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/maine-voters-reject-q...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Alongside it is a temporary (until Nov 2027) moratorium on data centers over 20 megawatts. This seems to be in place so they could establish a proper legal and environmental framework for building out data centers in the future.
This is exactly the kind of approach to legislation we should all hope our local representatives are competent enough to do.
Every NIMBY thinks they’re being optimally thoughtful (tm), except the answer is always the same, two years of environment studies, followed by a loud resounding “No”.
Why would they approve anything? They have no incentive to.
C'mon. Be reasonable for a second. Or at the very least actually read past the title before commenting.
This is actively seeking to reduce NIMBYism
> As part of the moratorium, Maine’s Data Center Coordination Council would study and oversee the environmental impact and electricity bill increases datacenters often bring to local residents and “consider data-sharing requirements and processes for proposed datacenters.”
https://www.404media.co/maine-datacenter-construction-bill-l...
I think you're much more likely to see actual populist NIMBYism if this bill was not passed
What you’re asking for is an EPA for “do I approve of what this data center is used for?”. Which is insane.
Yes
The science of hosting rack GPU servers in the middle of is unknown? Are you listening to yourself? Power and water usage is extremely well known. This isn’t a Nuclear Fusion site.
This is exactly what I mean though, if you can just keep claiming everything is an unknown you can successfully do nothing ever. The NIMBY mantra.
Spare me with the “temporary”, nobody will ever find the political will to actually approve data centers in Maine for the next quarter century, I can guarantee it.
Look I live in a leafy affluent area and there's just no way in hell a data center would ever be built here. There will be lawyers.
Maine is poor.
This is completely different than what you're describing (even if the end results are sometimes the same).
It may not be worse, but it is more likely. There just aren't trillions of dollars being poured into new smelters across the country. If there were, then I imagine laws being enacted about them to.
It's not like we actually hurt for a "Tech" industry. Southern Maine has a lot more "tech: jobs than you would expect for being an old as hell and poor state.
Need that for new power plants too: more, smaller, local.
But I think hoping "local representatives are competent enough" is wishful thinking.
California on the other hand… but they are clearly far from becoming a “dead state”
This too is the beauty of federalism. You want to live in a dead retiree state? You can. You want to live in a bustling industrial district? You can too. As long as you do things through proper democratic channels.
> Now do this for housing
But this bill is not about housing. This response makes as much sense as responding to a new law legalizing marijuana and saying "now do this for heroin, rape and murder."
All you get is ugly industrial sprawl.
Meanwhile CMP slow rolls connections to all the new Solar farms starting up trying to help our expensive power situation.
How is this like "tragedy of the commons"?
Good news: lots of choice.
Sorry people aren't bending over backwards to help your AI start-up get VC funding, but maybe if y'all were a bit more honest, people wouldn't hate the infrastructure you're desperately trying to install in their backyard. Because it sure as shit isn't going in yours, is it?
The only part of Texas I've driven is between Austin and S Antonio. It was perhaps the least-beautiful wilderness I've driven through. It really did just feel like desert and billboards - like if Walmart was a highway.
But I also presume Texas marketing itself as a less-regulated alternative (e.g. to California) is why it's easy to imagine Texas wanting infrastructure that Maine might not.
It takes 2 seconds to look at google satellite view of the area and see lots of desert with strips of green
https://maps.app.goo.gl/R8HuWBi66548Jq5BA
Of course you already know this but for everyone else it is called the Basin and Range province. You have desert areas and then a mountain range with much higher elevation with cooler temperatures and more precipitation which means trees and forests and green in color
Okay, we'll give Nevada a participation award for "green in color". Maine wins the "green in color" category by a lot. It's orders of magnitude greener.
"Green" isn't everything though. Nevada has a lot of brown going for it!
Oh, Maine also has a tidal coastline of 3478 miles, but Nevada is landlocked. Nevada does have a couple of big lakes though.
That said, if I had to choose between Nevada and Maine for a getaway, I'd choose Maine.
Personally, while it isn't my favorite landscape or even my favorite desert landscape, I still think it is a landscape with intrinsic value and beauty.
Those small towns are often positioned such that even if you plopped a billion dollar datacenter on top of them, it wouldn't change much, as even with second and third order effects it's adding 100-200 total population.
They are definitely driving up electric costs for residential customers, though (along with EVs and heat pumps) which is a major problem.
Besides the heavily oak covered hill country west of Austin it's pretty much the ugliest landscape in the country. I will admit the west Texas desert is less ugly than the desert of southern Arizona/eastern California, but north/east Texas is the flattest, least interesting part of the Mississippi basin (Nebraska/Kansas/Oklahoma are similarly meh but you don't have the insane humidity).
or…have you never been?
Why would anyone want to go to Texas to build a datacenter and worry about the cooling, when they could pick any other state?
https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/638FA4CD35438/media%2FF5jNt...
Datacenters really aren't that good for the locals. Low property tax, just tens of jobs but very high infrastructure needs.
NoVa literally one of the richest regions on the planet and it's all sorta tied up in the same thing. Seems unfair to say DCs "bring nothing", the whole ecosystem is a manifestation of concentrated defense spend.
To all the dopes wondering why people hate your data center contribution craze so much this is why.
Don’t know why it needs to be spelled out so explicitly. It’s obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temp. I’ve seen it all over the country at this point. People are really made when their bills get real expensive.
If they build datacenters anyway, there should be plenty of extra funding for power infrastructure.
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/08/texas-data-centers-s...
And of course you can (and should!) get rid of those state tax exemptions which have served their purpose.