Comment by bespokedevelopr
8 hours ago
I don’t like that county officials are willing to sign NDAs in order to bring data centers to their counties. It should be public, there should be competition if it is so desirable or important to be located in that county. The leaders in these companies love to talk up free-market, but then do everything to Standard Oil their way in.
I also don’t understand the vehement push back against data centers in WI. It is a prime location for both residents and business. WI and all of the upper midwest was gutted of their manufacturing in my parents time. Now companies are bringing back long term commitments and the people there don’t want it?
I can understand not wanting a data center in AZ or NM. But WI has the resources, climate, and power generating capabilities to support this. There is talk of bringing back the Kewaunee nuclear plant even to support growth.
How does a former manufacturing power house state, not want to bring back jobs and the tax revenue a dc will pull in?
One of the boomer-issues I’ve heard, as I characterize it since it comes from my fam, is that data centers along with solar are taking away farm land and they’re pouty about it. However that farm land is soybeans grown for export to other countries, acting as a fresh water subsidy for those places. The farmers aren’t feeding the state anyways.
Most of the fervent opposition however comes from my generation who are mad about AI so therefore data centers can’t be built because they don’t like it. It isn’t a very compelling argument.
There are many poor characterizations here. Besides data centers clearly not employing the average worker, there are real impacts. In Farmington, for instance, has a data center planning to drain 900,000,000 gallons of water per year from the local aquifer. You have instances like Granville, Ohio where electric prices rose by 60% over five years after data centers went in. One proposed data center in Sherburne County is planning to consume 600MW of power alone (typical household uses 1.2 kW). This is also as there are roughly $500 million in state subsidies being drafted for these data centers.
So, essentially, Minnesotans are being asked to subsidize facilities that will employ only a handful of specialists, raise electric bills, strain water resources, produce outputs many residents actively oppose, and accelerate the automation of their jobs...all while the state offers ~$500 million in support to these companies and nothing to offset the costs borne by residents.
This article is written by a Wisconsin publication about data centers in Wisconsin. My comments are specific to Wisconsin. Like I said in my comment, some states aren’t well equipped to handle new manufacturing/dc.
I cannot take your comment very serious when so much of it is plainly wrong. You fall into the later category of what I described in my original comment. Outside of reddit-sphere people do not take these flippant and short-sighted comments seriously.
its mostly about environmental concerns, but data centres dont add nearly the amount of jobs that manufacturing had
So add 0 jobs because people don’t like chatgpt and it won’t create the same amount as 1960’s manufacturing; or add some jobs to rural WI?
You only have to look at Hermiston/Umatilla OR to see how impactful data centers can be on rural communities. There’s a lot more than 40 new jobs there since Amazon started building data centers.