Local data centers face different community objections

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 14:21

   So if you just had to summarize a bit of the findings, what did it share? Unsurprisingly, most communities are against data centers. Fair. And, but, you know, the reasons are quite deep and some of them are not, you know, what you would think. So water is, obviously water use is a big thing, but, you know, I think a data center developers will tell you, like the data centers have gotten better and actually used recycled water, but water still comes up a lot. Noise comes up a lot. And so we encountered a community where somebody's pool was near a data center and they're being compensated by the developer every month for the next like two years. Wow. Yeah. So noise is one that comes up a lot. Fires happen in data centers. And so we have definitely heard stories of fire stations being, you know, fire departments

2. 15:15

   being deployed toward data centers in small communities, too. So it is very, very nuanced as to why communities don't like data centers. What I love about this is, especially as we're trying to report on the macro trends, we're like, wow, everyone hates data centers because of AI. And then when you actually talk to people, I think Jasmine Sun did a great local reporting, people aren't really thinking about AI.

3. 15:40

   They're thinking about things that affect them, like prices, electricity prices, water. And it's, as you mentioned, it's very different per community, per municipality. And so trying to put some big blanket statement about how everyone thinks and why the sentiment is negative towards data centers just is an inaccurate picture. It's a completely inaccurate picture. here at picture. It's, uh, these communities, every community is so nuanced and so different that, uh, yeah, you can't, you can't just look at a broad brushstroke and that's what we aim to figure out. Yeah. Now that you've started working on Hamlet, what's the biggest thing that you know now that you didn't know when you first started? Yeah. Uh, I would, oh gosh, that's like, that's a really hard question. I mean, but I would say like, I go back to the number of different issues

4. 16:25

   that come up in these communities i mean it ranges from i mean pickleball comes up wow you know like i mean there there's stuff that happens in local that you would when you get a fishbowl eye view and you actually watch the video it's crazy what people get passionate about and uh and every little every little city every little hamlet has its own story and um you know to understand how to how to change the minds of americans you got to go down to that level you got to go down to that level