They didn't want data centers. It didn't matter, but it should. | Opinion
Data centers are almost certainly here to stay. But there must be limits on local officials' desire to make money, and it would be best if the federal government stepped in.
Nobody wants this in their backyard – yet for many Americans in rural communities, there isn’t much of a choice.
In Utah, the Box Elder County Commission recently voted unanimously to go through with building a 40,000-acre data center on unincorporated, privately owned land after a contentious meeting where residents – the ones who will have to live next to the monstrosity – mostly voiced their opposition.
“It's not like we are being heard here anyway,” one man in the crowd yelled, per The Salt Lake Tribune.
The data center, once completed, will use more than two times the energy used in the entire state. It will generate great amounts of air pollution and noise pollution, and will use thousands of gallons of water, which is already a scarce resource in the area. At the cost of the environment and residents’ sanity, the county estimates that 2,000 permanent jobs will be created.
The problem isn’t solely in Utah. Across the country, more than 1,500 data centers are in various stages of development, with the majority of these plants being proposed in rural communities.
While data centers are necessary to keep up with artificial intelligence’s ever-growing presence, it’s clear that these businesses are unwanted in many of the communities where they are ending up. There either needs to be more regulation of the centers so that they aren’t affecting the day-to-day lives of residents, or there needs to be a serious conversation in the United States about how AI usage is harming the planet and our local communities.
Polls show data centers are unpopular. It's easy to see why.
Americans seem to have an overall negative view of data centers, and it’s easy to understand why if you look into the environmental impacts.
According to polling from the Pew Research Center, 39% of U.S. adults say data centers are “mostly bad” for the environment, 38% say they’re “mostly bad” for home energy costs, and 30% say they’re “mostly bad” for the quality of life of the people who live near them.
Still, data centers aren’t uniformly unpopular. A Politico poll from February found that 37% of respondents would support the creation of a new data center in their area, while 28% would oppose it.
Yet the numbers look a little different in areas where these data centers have been proposed. In Virginia, the state with the most data centers in the country, a Washington Post/Schar School poll found that just 35% of residents are comfortable with the creation of data centers in their area, a drop of 34 percentage points since 2023.
A lot of this discrepancy could be attributed to the fact that people don’t realize the issues data centers bring until these giants are in their neighborhoods. They may see the benefit in bringing new jobs to their community – until they find out that data centers create fewer jobs than industry experts report. They may see the increased tax revenue brought by these projects as a plus, but thinking something is a good idea and actually living with the consequences are two very different things.
I typically consider myself someone who is pro-development. I think building businesses is inherently a good thing. But when those businesses are directly affecting the quality of life in a region – and overwhelmingly unwanted by the people who live there – it behooves local government officials to take those concerns seriously.
Data centers are here to stay. Is the trade-off worth it?
It’s not lost on me that many of these projects are coming to rural communities that have been hit hard by jobs moving overseas. Local politicians likely see these projects as beneficial to their communities – and they can be. It just so happens that the trade-off might not be worth it.
“Shark Tank” mogul Kevin O’Leary, one of the investors in the Utah data center, doesn’t believe that the criticism of the multibillion dollar project is real. He has accused those opposing the data center of being “professional protesters,” and says his team understands the environmental impact of the project.
Yet O’Leary, who lives in Miami Beach, isn’t the one who will be woken up in the middle of the night by the endless noise coming from the proposed data center. He will not be the one to suffer adverse health effects from the air pollution it creates, nor will he be the one asked to conserve water, as most of Utah remains in a drought.
I’d go so far as to say O’Leary would feel a lot different about data centers if there were one being built in his neighborhood.
Data centers are almost certainly here to stay, thanks to our ever-growing reliance on AI in everyday life. We need the computing power to keep up with demand. But there must be limits on local officials’ desire to make money, and it would be best if the federal government stepped in and had stronger, uniform regulations on data centers so that states with Republican leadership are not hoodwinked into blindly approving these projects.
Residents clearly don’t feel great about being asked to live next to data centers. Politicians need to respect that.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on Bluesky: @sarapequeno.bsky.social