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Comment by pragma_x | Hacker News Reader

Water consumption and localized atmospheric heating have been cited elsewhere as drawbacks. There have been some articles citing noise/vibration pollution (subsonic?) but I'm not completely convinced on that front. Personally, I would add electric grid load to the list.

In the worst case, if your local municipality sides with business over the little guy, that means potential brownouts and water shortages for you.

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Farming consumes more water than datacenters. Infrasound is pseudoscience. The biggest issue imo is that they use a ton of electricity and this country has forgotten how to expand electricity supply so prices go up. The solution to that is to create more electricity though, not ban datacenters

Make the companies constructing a DC pay a bond or whatever for the new power plant, and don't give them tax subsidies. Easy enough?

The companies building data centers have made it clear they're willing to pay to build out the grid. The problem isn't money, it's bureaucracy.

> Farming consumes more water than datacenters.

But you don't see center-pivot or linear-movement farmland built up in areas with high population density, nor do you see them using the municipal, potable water supply for irrigation. That is where datacenters are being built and what datacenters are doing, however, and it is why datacenters are blamed for the exacerbation of municipal water systems in these communities. Groundwater, surface water, harvested rainwater, and reclaimed wastewater are the major sources used by farms. Dasani is the major source of water for datacenters, and it makes a massive difference on the water use math.

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