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Comment by jwlake | Hacker News Reader

Has no one heard of the concept of industrial zoning? When you live next to an industrial zone you get all the consequences. I love how literally all these projects are on shuttered sites of various plants that were presumably louder and more polluting than these new data centers.

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Visit Loudoun County VA and get back to me.

Virginia mostly used by-right zoning, which treated data centers like just another office block. The result is linked below. Those cranes in the back of photo 2 are building yet another data center. Loudoun recently changed the zoning laws to end by-right development of data centers, but it's a bit too little, too late. Yes, some of those homes predate the data centers. Yes, not all of them - the county has allowed this mixed development for 20+ years now.

1 - https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GettyIm...

2 - https://oxfordamerican.org/media/pages/oa-now/how-data-cente...

> The result is linked below. Those cranes in the back of photo 2 are building yet another data center.

Is this supposed to be bad? Maybe the datacenter in the first picture has an ear piercing whine, but neither of the pictures looks obviously bad.

Unzoned means industrial. A slaughterhouse is MUCH worse than living next to a data center. If you want it zoned residential only do that.

It's isn't unzoned. It's zoned commercial. In VA, data centers are considered commercial, so allowed to be built by-right in existing commercial zones. Loudoun Co just updated their local zoning to override this and require re-zoning/approvals. (at least this is my understanding of the situation).

So, you buy a house, and think a small office park or strip mall might get built next door. Instead, it's a 6 story block that looks like the Borg, belches exhaust from on-site generators, and buzzes constantly making you think you have tinnitus or something.

You don’t seem to know much about where these datacenters are being built. They are usually greenfield sites, often in relatively rural areas where there may not actually be any local zoning regulations. Or when they are on brownfield urban sites, they are using “temporary” gas turbines that are incredibly loud and break all air pollution laws, taking advantage of loopholes and a complete lack of enforcement by the current EPA.

This is not an excuse for residents to have lower quality of life for capital speculators "because it was industrial zoning". Try to make your case in a public hearing with a room full of residents, see how it goes. Long time politicians are getting fired over it, so natural consequences will help with this.

Data Center Disputes Fuel 33 Recall Efforts, Ballotpedia Finds - https://ballotpedia.org/Press_release_Data_Center_Disputes_F... - July 7th, 2026

Utah Senate President Loses Primary After Data Center Backlash - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/24/us/j-stuart-adams-utah-se... | https://archive.today/MMot6 - June 24th, 2026

I live in Utah and we have refineries a few blocks away from residential neighborhoods and a literal strip mine visible from half of the Salt Lake valley.

The datacenter controversy has nothing to do with caring about the environment and is a complete scam that preys on low-information voters. It is a product of outside Chinese money being funneled into US politics to hobble the US in Artificial Intelligence.

> It is a product of outside Chinese money being funneled into US politics to hobble the US in Artificial Intelligence.

Please provide citations and evidence for this assertion. As it stands, this is an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.

> refineries a few blocks away from residential neighborhoods

Seems like something that ought to be addressed as well, and should not be used as a justification for other lousy things.

> It is a product of outside Chinese money being funneled into US politics to hobble the US in Artificial Intelligence

Or this could be Russian propaganda, to manipulate US opinion against China in this case. What are your sources?

Without evidence to the contrary, the prevailing narrative is more likely correct- people have been told by the tech titans that AI will change everything and they'll loose their jobs, so they don't like it.

In fact, whoever is saying the Chinese are tricking Americans may be trying to get more people to support US big-tech's AI build-out (or stock market bubble) by appealing to nationlism - that the Chinese will get us. A double cross.

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