Comment by piker
5 hours ago
Such a law illustrates the beauty of federalism. Texas and other states can have them if they want them! Maine has not nearly as much space and much more natural beauty to protect [per square mile], so it can and maybe should have a different set of rules. That's cool.
This is a recipe for creating dead retiree states. Just NIMBY everything, NIMBY the power sources[1] [2], then complain about a lack of power so NIMBY any type of new industrial <anything>.
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...
It's the opposite of NIMBY. It's smart thoughtful policy and it is NOT a simple ban. Nobody bothers to read passed the title but the main piece of this legislation is the creation of the Maine Data Center Coordination Council.
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.
Appointing a council of elders who will think through every imagined horror before approving a project (or a “framework”) is basically the textbook definition of NIMBY-ism.
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.
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Is a data center worse than an iron smelter or aluminum refiner? The negative backlash is way out of proportion to the actual harm of a light industrial activity with minimal pollution. Put in requirements for responsible caps on electricity usage and ban "temporary" generators so they don't get a backdoor public subsidy on their power consumption. The market will sort the rest out.
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Smaller data centers which are widely distributed across the country is a better idea both for jobs and grid resilience.
Need that for new power plants too: more, smaller, local.
But I think hoping "local representatives are competent enough" is wishful thinking.
Maine is far from being a nimby state, apart from the 30% expansion rule for houses <250ft from water, there is basically no zoning across the entire state and a fly by night hot dog diner could go up next to your million dollar cottage if it wanted to.
California on the other hand… but they are clearly far from becoming a “dead state”
Is your argument that we should ignore the will of the people? Because this is what the people of Maine want. Why exactly should Maine be forced to have data centers in it when its citizens don't want that?
We have rights and representative republics to restrain the will of the people for a reason.
I don't have a problem with NIMS -- which isn't the same as NIMBY. It's one of the reasons the US is a federation.
> This is a recipe for creating dead retiree states.
Good news: lots of choice.
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Don't know why people think Texas doesn't have natural beauty. It's a huge state.
I'm from Nevada, another state that people presume is all desert. (Really, it's all mountains.)
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.
Nevada is a gem. Way too dry but incredibly beautiful with some truly unique features (ancient trees, hot springs, strange minerals, clear dark night skies). Eastern/central Texas is far less interesting.
Most people never bother to look at a map.
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basin_and_Range_Province
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Between Austin and San Antonio is so developed that it's considered by many to be a single "metro" area, DFW-style. There's very little not developed directly between the two.
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Yeah, you drove through part of the Texas Triangle. Not really an area I would go to for sights
Ah yes, the vast, undeveloped wilderness of I-35 between Austin and San Antonio. Totally just unoccupied desert.
Folks have been conditioned to consider the deserts of West Texas, especially the Permian Basin, to be wastelands with no redeeming value.
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.
Same with swamps and wetlands.
Yeah, sorry that wasn't intended as a slight to Texas. Texas just does have a lot of barren landscape where datacenters wouldn't offend as much. I modified it to make that clear. Also, energy is playing a role here.
I've been watching a series on YT that is specifically about rural towns in Texas that are being abandoned or on the brink of total collapse. Much of it has to do with highways and routing around these communities decades ago. I don't know if a datacenter is the answer, but it has to be better then what looks like a post apocalyptic America.
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Is that really the primary concern about datacenters? Their aesthetics? I thought the major problem with them was that they muscle in on valuable resources like water and electricity, consuming what would otherwise be used by people, and driving the prices up.
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I've driven through all of Texas twice, and had to spend time in Austin and Houston for work, but never had to live there, so I'd like to think I'm informed without being biased.
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).
Driving across Texas is relatively easy, driving "through all of Texas" is an almost possible task.
Because it's Republican, obviously.
yes but they likely won't build datacenters by destroying national parks would they?
What beautiful part do you live in?
or…have you never been?
Maine banning datacenter construction is is a bit like Texas banning lobster fishing.
No because they have a big interconnect being built from Canada right now that people want to tap into
Isn't it cheaper to cool a datacenter in a more temperate/cool region than one that has a 9-month-long summer?
Why would anyone want to go to Texas to build a datacenter and worry about the cooling, when they could pick any other state?
Because the other big expense in a datacenter: electricity. Texas has really cheap electricity compared to the rest of the country, sitting at second cheapest after North Dakota.
Long summers = tx actually has lots more Solar, but also biz friendly laws, biz friendly taxes, lots of corp HQ, cheap land, own power grid (for better or worse), cost of labor, etc.
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And abolishing ICE! Why should states be forced to host armies they don't agree with?
Strange that suddenly they don’t seem to like this concept so much anymore :)
“I support the right of $state to ban $thing”
Wait, not like that!
States don't have "rights", people do. I don't support any state's power to take away any human's rights. And bootlickers who do shouldn't have the chance to act out their fascistic fantasies
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They sure have a right to enact policies that keep them economically & demographically irrelevant.
https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/638FA4CD35438/media%2FF5jNt...
Interesting that there’s sort of a blue line right down the middle. Wonder why
Data Centers would have made them sooooooo rich, very silly policies indeed, they’d be swimming in money
I can't tell if this is sarcasm? On the chance that it isn't, how would that make them rich? The profit from the data centers goes to the owner not to the people in the community or rest of the state.
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It's emblematic of Maine's wider anti-business and anti-growth climate which may explain why the state now has the highest median age in the US and one of the lowest fertility rates of any state.