The fight against data centers is, in many ways, a fight against AI, big tech, and government control/surveillance. For many it is a fight against billionaires controlling our lives and profiting off of our tax dollars.

The majority of data centers don’t train AI or perform AI transactions. They mostly host mundane transactions, websites, and databases.

However, AI is working its way into every piece of software and every system. It is powerful. It is here now. It is getting better everyday. It is not going away.

Many even feel that AI is critical to our national security and that allowing China to dominate this space would be a grave mistake.

And, AI workloads require FAR more computational power, and electricity, than traditional cloud computing.

In the US we WILL be building new data centers focusing on AI.

AI will be a part of virtually everything and will transform our society. There will be jobs lost. There will be new jobs added. While AI is something to be understood, regulated, and controlled, we should not live in fear of it.

This bold new world may feel uncomfortable, but to be successful in the future, we have to be willing to embrace, and shape, change.

Which brings us back to data centers. Locally, do we embrace them, tolerate them, or outright reject them?

Resources

🔵  The real reason people hate AI data centers so much

🔵  The more young people use AI, the more they hate it

🔵  Why Does Everyone Hate AI?

🔵  Timely Topic: An Expert’s Take on Why We Should Not Fear AI

🔵  What We Fear When We Fear Artificial Intelligence

In a nutshell: Data center diesel backup generators emit pollutants, but their use is minimal, and existing regulations and standards largely curb adverse impacts.

• Large data centers may rely on a volume of diesel generators for backup power.

• These generators emit several harmful air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter.

• They are regulated by KDHE; using national standards which limit use and allowable emissions to protect air quality.

• Backup generators rarely run for prolonged periods.

• Routine operation & maintenance (10-30 minutes total per month).

• Few actual power outages (operators reported 0 to 2 outages at their facilities in last two years, lasting from 1 to 5 hours, in Virginia).

While a “worst-case” prolonged, large-scale regional outage could contribute to temporary air quality issues, such outages are rare, and air quality would return to normal after the event.

Possible regulations

1. Require all diesel generators meet emissions standards at least as protective as EPA Tier 4 standards (as codified in 40 CFR Part 1039).

2. Require natural gas generators, in place of diesel generators, and require that they meet emissions standards at least as protective as EPA Tier 2 for non-road large spark ignition engines.

3. Require long duration battery storage on-site, in place of generators. While a new and evolving concept, it is feasible for some installations. Most data centers already have 15 minutes (minimum) of battery storage in place, so this would be a continuation of their current strategy. Again, not common and possibly not feasible for many, but a thought for discussion.

4. Require renewable energy standards for the data center. A vast majority of the air pollution will come from the power plant generating the electricity. Requiring renewable energy for a portion of the power would lower emissions, at the source.

Resources

🔵  Localized Air Pollution Impacts from Data Centers in Virginia

🔵  Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission State of Virginia Data Center 2024 Study

🔵  What do you Know about Tier 4 Regulations?

🔵  Navigating Diesel Generator Regulations in 2026

🔵  Diesel vs. Natural Gas Generators for Data Centers

🔵  A crash course on US air pollution

Absolutely true, and the number one reason to resist building a data center.

Ours is a very old, carbon-based world. The history of our planet is the history of carbon. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.  It absorbs radiant heat energy from the earth as it travels straight out into space, then re-radiates it in all directions including sending some of it back to our planet.

Basically you can think of CO2 as altering the path of earth's radiant heat energy, just a bit, and slightly reducing our ability to get rid of heat.

Our climate is in a delicate balance, through many different systems and processes. All it takes is a worldwide nudge to kick in many other amplification processes. The butterfly effect, if you will.

However, data centers will be built, whether it is here or elsewhere. Consumer demand will help lead the charge, and national security and competitive pressures will seal the deal. Data centers will be built.

So, can data centers be built without such a heavy carbon footprint? Yes.

Renewable energy mandates can drastically reduce the footprint, as can highly efficient cooling systems, better software and hardware efficiencies, and attention to all process within the center. Renewable energy also lessens water usage, as fossil fuel power plants can consume large amounts of water to produce power. In Europe, several cities even use the wast heat from data centers to heat the urban business and residential cores of their cities.

Carbon footprint has to be thought of as a design priority, in order to make a meaningful impact during the planning, construction, and ultimately maintenance phases in the data center lifecycle.

Resources

🔵  Quantifying Data Center Carbon Footprint 2024

🔵  Carbon and water footprints of data centers & what this could mean for AI

🔵  Two Wildly Different Data Centers on How to Meet Electricity Demand

🔵  Green Data Center Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis

🔵  2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report

🔵  Data centers are outgrowing the grid. Solar is filling the gap

Many feel data centers should be located in industrial zones within cities, as the further you can keep data centers from residential areas, the better. Required power, water, and Internet resources are all concentrated in urban areas, not rural areas.

However, the data isn't so clear on residential property values being affected negatively by nearby data centers.

Data centers generally do not decrease home values and, in some cases, may increase them. Studies show that homes near data centers often sell for more due to surrounding infrastructure improvements, increased demand from high earning data center employees and vendors, and a stronger tax base. While they bring industrial-like noise, they are low-traffic and often viewed as stable neighbors compared to other developments.

However, this could be changing in the future, as public opinion of data centers sours. Perception is reality, so if data centers can't shake the bad PR, then it will be more critical than ever to keep them in established industrial zones.

Resources

🔵  Study: Home Prices Are Higher When the House Is Near a Data Center

🔵  What impact does data centers have on housing?

🔵  Will Living Near a Data Center Decrease Your Property Value? Real Estate Experts

🔵  Study: Data Centers & 2023 Home Sales in Northern Virginia

First of all, let's address definitions presented that DO NOT work.

1. Definition by land size. A failed motion was put forward to limit data centers to 1 acre in size. This just doesn't work, as data centers can build upward and downward. Computers are also increasing in rack power density dramatically, with the result being that even a small land footprint could consume a large amount of power and produce high heat loads.

2. Definition by number of employees onsite. It was also discussed to limit a data center to 20 employees. This is counter productive as we want more employment, not less. Also, a company could simply use remote employees in their operations, or convert local employee tasks into outsourced sub-contractor tasks, to bypass limitations.

3. Definition by whether the data center only does processing for themselves, or for others. Even in-house corporate data centers can occasionally do processing for a variety of other entities. This definition is unworkable and unenforceable and doesn't address the one key metric that truly impacts the community.

4. Definition by square footage of the building. Building size is not necessarily proportional to the overall amount of compute that is taking place.

So, what metric should be used to determine data center size?

Electricity usage! Basically, how many MW of power the data center will consume in its operations.

Power usage is at the heart of all environmental and infrastructure impacts. It determines the heat released, and the cooling needed. It determines the grid infrastructure and backup generation required.

Regulators should focus on the power usage for each data center/data center complex, and on how much power regulators will allow in total to be used for data centers in their jurisdiction.

Once you define the allowable MW power usage, everything else will fall into place naturally.

The final question is what MW size is compatible with the community?. Traditionally hyper-scale data centers started at 100MW and went up from there. However, massive data centers in the GigaWatt (GW) range are starting to be built, so numeric definitions may be changing.

Policymakers, planners, and the community they serve will need to discuss and decide what's right for them.

An AI bubble bursting does not mean AI will go away, it just means the value of AI might currently be too high.

AI will still be around and there will still be the requirement for AI processing power, but the amount of investment into new AI Data centers will most likely be greatly reduced in a bubble burst.

When the housing market imploded in 2008-2009, and we had the Great Recession, housing in Kansas ultimately lost 10-15% of its value, temporarily. Prices did not "crash". Although many investors who were living on the edge went bankrupt, the houses still had substantial value.

In the event of a crash, companies like Microsoft and Meta have enough cash on hand to finish the projects they started, and still utilize them. They would also most likely slow down the construction of ongoing projects and cancel some future AI Data centers.

Or they can pivot from AI Data centers to traditional ones. Infrastructure like buildings, the power grid, and cooling systems can be carried over, while the actual servers are exchanged for non AI focused ones.

It is also highly unlikely that a company would abandon an extremely valuable property due to a sales tax exemption expiring in 20 years.

With that said, a recent trend has been to ask for a decommissioning plan at application and even a pre-funded decommissioning bond fund for approved projects. Regulators should consider this.

An even more likely requirement might be for cleanup of e-waste, if it should ever come to that. Data centers will continually replace, upgrade, and repurpose their electronics. The building, land, and utility infrastructure will still be valuable, but old electronic equipment quickly becomes worthless, so a conversation about a bond to address this issue might be a wise one if a decommissioning bond is not required.

At a local anti-data center symposium, presenters stated that soon data centers will be built in space, or under the ocean to be cooled by sea water, and that land based data centers would be abandoned.

To put something into orbit in 2026 costs anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 per pound, and good luck trying to dispatch tech support. Also, while space is cold, cooling is far more complicated in a vacuum.

Putting an installation under the ocean presents so many complex issues that we still don't have permanent human outposts below the seas. Salt water is a very challenging environment, but probably far more feasible than space based data centers.

There is demand for data centers now, and in the future, and they work just fine on land.

Resources

🔵  The Hidden Cost of Data Center Growth -Millions of Tons of E-Waste

🔵  Data Centers: A New Frontier in Obsolescence

🔵  Sustainable Approaches to Data Center Decommissioning

▶️  The Killer Behind Data Centers In Space

Larger data centers can use a lot of power. This may require additional power generation facilities, transmission enhancements, switching equipment, etc.

In the past all of these costs might have been spread across all customers/ratepayers, driving up electric bills for residential customers.

Keep in mind that Kansas operates a completely vertically integrated, regulated utility market, unlike Texas and Virginia. There is no retail electric choice. The Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) controls all aspects.

In November of 2025, the Kansas Corporation Commission approved a new tariff plan for Large Load Power Users, which effectively places the burden for additional infrastructure squarely on the customer whose large load required it in the first place.

Evergy is on record (see below) saying that Large Load Power Users will pay for and add additional infrastructure that will benefit all customers with additional grid stability and capabilities.

This is a major step forward in protecting residential customers in Kansas, and governmental entities can take comfort in knowing data centers will not impact their citizens power bills.

Q. Is electricity being sold to the data center at a wholesale or retail rate?

A. Evergy is selling electricity to data centers at retail rates under a specially structured tariff, not at wholesale rates.

Here's the full picture:

The Utility Mandate in SB98: Qualifying data centers must commit to purchasing electricity for 10 years from the certified public utility in the territory where the data center is located. That effectively means Evergy in most of eastern Kansas. A key piece of the legislation is a prohibition forbidding data center owners from constructing their own electric power plants. So they can't self-generate and must buy from Evergy.

What Kind of Rate — Wholesale or Retail?

It's retail, but under a special new tariff called the Large Load Power Service (LLPS) plan. Demand and energy rates in the LLPS plan are designed to cover Evergy's incremental cost to serve large load customers, so existing customers are not subsidizing those users. Any system upgrades necessary solely to serve new customers will be directly assigned to those customers.

The Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) — a state regulator — approved this tariff, which is the hallmark of a retail rate structure. The new tariff provides large-load facilities with lower energy rates and other incentives in exchange for bearing a portion of the grid costs required to support the increasing data center load. Large load users requiring 75 MW or more will have to sign an energy contract for between 12 and 17 years with high early termination fees, and in exchange will receive long-term, stable rates at a competitive price.

No Rate Discounts Allowed:

Data centers are not allowed to take advantage of the state law that allows large economic development projects to discount electricity rates by 40% for the first five years and 20% for the following five years. The legislature specifically closed that door.

Bottom line: Evergy is the exclusive provider, but the electricity is sold at a regulated retail rate — a specialized large-load retail tariff overseen by the KCC — not at wholesale. The structure was explicitly designed so that data centers pay their full share rather than being subsidized by residential and small business ratepayers.

Jason Klindt, Evergy Senior Director of External Affairs at the Sedgwick County Data Center Round Table on 3-25-2026, speaking about new data center rates and infrastructure costs:

"So the first thing to know is that data centers pay 100% of the costs for use that they are causing in terms of infrastructure. So by way of example, in Missouri, which is ahead of Kansas in terms of data centers, I have several data centers that are paying tens of millions of dollars in costs. It's their cost that they are covering.

The concern came to be the generation that they (data centers) are causing. It's causing us to build generation. How do we protect customers from that so that the data center or large load in this case is paying that share? So what we did is we went to the KCC, the Kansas Corporation Commission, and filed for a new tariff known as the LLPS -Large Load Power Service. This applies to every project that is 75 megawatts or larger. This is what most of your large data centers will fall under this. And frankly, some of your large manufacturing facilities will fall under this. Five years ago, I would have given a data center a discount. They no longer get a discount. They don't even pay the same rate as the other tier do. They pay 15 to 20% higher. And the reason they do that is they pay that premium to make sure they're paying more of that. What we do with that is that when we go into a rate case, we give that extra revenue to all of the other non-LLPS customers to make sure that they are paying the generation costs, and it's coming from them (data centers).

We also have several other terms in effect. There's a minimum term length. So it's 17 years, you get five years to ramp up, and then another 12 years of contract to be on the system. Today, there's not a single other tier that has any sort of protection. Any of them can walk tomorrow. These (data centers) will have 17-year protections to make sure they're on the system. They will have a minimum monthly bill. What that means is that if they say they're going to use 200 megawatts, but they only use 100 megawatts, they're still going to pay for that 200 megawatts. It's called take it or pay. So we are making sure that they don't make commitments and then back out of them, (which would) then hurt our other customers.

The other thing that they have, we have of course, termination of fees, all those types of things, and then collateral. I'm less concerned about some of the large tech companies that you all know. They have big balance sheets. I am concerned though, if I see somebody who is an LLC. If it's Joe's LLC, I want to make sure that they have the financial wherewithal that should something go wrong, they can still meet their commitments. So we continue that. We asked for those collateral positions. This was agreed to by every stakeholder at the KCC. 

There was a comment earlier about regulation, and I think that is a good point that there are a lot of energy regulations that we follow starting with the KCC, but it does not end there. It's the alphabet soup of federal agencies that overlook us from FERC to NERC to probably things I don't even know about. So we are highly regulated. One of the differences between Ohio and Kansas or even New Jersey and Virginia, which is where I think you see this problem is those are de-regulated states. That means that they are not regulated by a KCC like we are in Kansas. And so one of the problems that they experience is that in those states, there is absolutely direct competition with data centers when they're buying their energy on the market. In Kansas, we don't have that issue. Remember, I have to, if I'm going to change my rates, I have to go in front of the Kansas Corporation Commission and ask for that.

I can't just say, oh, it's a hot day, we're going to charge more. We don't have the ability to do that. They do in a de-regulated state. But in a regulated state, we don't have that ability. So sometimes the nuances when you hear from different states might just be the type of regulation they have there in that local state."

AND finally, while many suspect, and claim, that data centers have been raising electricity rates nationwide, at least one comprehensive study shows they are actually responsible for a modest decrease in rates.

Resources

🔵  Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence from the US

🔵  How will data centers impact electric bills? Evergy discusses load rate

🔵  New Kansas rules set guidelines for data centers to protect smaller customers

🔵  Kansas Corporation Commission: Large Load Power Service Rate Plan

🔵  Data Center Myth Busting Reference Guide -Kansas Commerce -Myth #2

In our service area, Evergy would be the most likely energy provider for any new medium sized or larger data centers. While Co-ops can theoretically power a data center, most don't actually generate their own power and don't have the infrastructure to handle the load.

Grid reliability is Evergy's top priority. Evergy constantly works to provide the most reliable and resilient grid possible. They have knowledgeable engineers and talented financial people to help anticipate and build for future loads. They will not allow a load onto thier system that they cannot fully handle.

Jason Klindt, Evergy Senior Director of External Affairs at the Sedgwick County Data Center Round Table on 3-25-2026, speaking about new data center loads:

"I do want to also touch on sometimes what I'll hear folks is they'll say, well, we're going to have more brownouts or we don't have the energy as a regulated utility. Evergy cannot hook up any project unless we have the native generation to meet their peak load, plus another 15% reserve margin. So today I have the native load to back all of my generation plus that 15% reserve margin for the summer. It will be the same going forward. So we will not be in any, if you think we're in danger tomorrow, well, then we're in the same danger today because it is the same policy. I have to have the native load plus a reserve margin to do that."

Resources

🔵  Evergy: Data Center Load Is Real, But Already Priced In

🔵  Co-ops adapt to serve massive new loads while protecting members

This particlular accusation came from a Bloomberg article. The authors of the article (AI needs so much power, it’s making yours worse) compared THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) readings from 770,000 residential Whisker Labs’ sensors in the US, against a database of data center locations and sizes.

Locations with many large data centers were more likely to experience excessive THD in residential grid power. This is known as correlation, not causation. Thus, per the above image, ice cream does not cause sunburn, even though higher ice cream consumption correlates with increased sunburn.

Is it possible for data centers to create harmonics that impact upstream loads? Yes.

Is it something that happens in bulk? Not likely, as utilities monitor for this and penalize data centers if they detect it, so the centers have equipment that prevents it. If the data center generates too many harmonics, the utility will add filters at the substation to remove them and then charge the operator for that infrastructure charge.

Harmonics are worse for the data center than they are for residential consumers. It is kind of odd to allege that "rogue harmonics are bad enough to effect the basic electronics in a persons home, but the incredibly sensitive state of the art equipment in the data center would be just fine with it, so the owners just let it loose on the world".

Also, even IF data centers reflected dangerous harmonics back to the grid, it’s got to go through another transformer before it gets to a persons house, where those harmonics are absorbed and turned into heat. Harmonics are a bigger danger to the utilities transmission and distribution gear then they are to a home.

And finally, if grid upgrades are needed for a data center to operate, then the data center will pay for the upgrades and the entire grid will become more resilient and capable as a result of the investment.

Resources

🔵  AI needs so much power, it’s making yours worse

🔵  Ting: Analysis of Total Harmonic Distortion on the U.S. Electric Grid

🔵  Are data centers to blame for power quality issues?

The heat output is directly proportional to the energy input. A 20 MW Data Center will put out a little less than that in electrical resistance heating equivalent. Picture a 20 MW blow dryer.

So that's really bad, right? As usual it is much more complicated than that. Every single thing humans do that involves energy puts off heat. Driving your car. Building a boiler. Refrigerating a warehouse. Harvesting a crop. These all produce waste heat.

We also alter the albedo (reflectivity) of the land around us in many ways, usual increasing heat absorption. A blacktop road captures an immense amount of heat from the sun. Dark roofs do the same. That's why cities are usual around 5 degrees warmer than the country. Even planting a dark green soybean or corn field, over a wheat field affects albedo, humidity, and water consumption.

We live in the information age. Almost everything you do is supported by a Data Center. Every YouTube video and Google search will result in waste heat.

HOWEVER, the recent paper (linked below) that has people panicking titled "The data heat island effect: quantifying the impact of AI datacenters in a warming world" is fundamentally flawed. In the resources below is a great article by Andy Masley on why and how it is flawed.

Should we be concerned about the waste heat released from data centers? Well, it's actually pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things. But it would be nice if humans took the heat effects of what they build into more consideration. For instance, mandating lighter covered roofs on houses could have a major effect nationwide.

Possible solutions to reduce heat from data centers are to work on more efficent coding and more efficient processors. Another avenue would be to capture the waste heat and use it to heat homes and businesses in the winter. Yet another avenue would be requiring a certain part of the power to come from renewables, as fossil fuel power generation itself causes massive waste heat, and far more importantly, CO2 emissions that contribute to Climate Change.

Resources

🔵  Let's not compare data center heat exhaust to nuclear bombs

🔵  Data center heat is not raising the land temperature where they're built

🔵  Data center heat island effect-quantifying the impact -Suspect paper

Data Center critics use helium as another reason to ban them. Why? The post above shows one example. As usual, there is a small kernal of truth blown to large proportions, and weaponized.

Helium is used in the manufacturing process for semiconductors. It can also be used to fill the small empty cavity in hard drives to allow the discs to spin more freely.

Helium is also used in welding, breathing mixtures for divers, to pressurize rocket fuel tanks, and on and on. It is a limited resource and supply will have to be addressed at some point in the future. However, singling out a single small usage industry is a propaganda strategy, not a serious conversation about resources.

Resources

🔵 Explained: Helium Hard Drives

🔵 Helium Drives Cloud Storage

🔵 Why Helium is Essential to Semiconductors

🔵 Helium Market -Usage

What do they pay in taxes? What kind of economic impact will they really make here?

First, a fact. 100% of NOTHING is still NOTHING. Incentives don't lose money if the business wouldn't have come to your area without them. AND, there are a huge number of tax exemptions for all kinds of businesses in Kansas. Basic agriculture incentives are even baked into the Kansas Constitution. Incentives are part of the fabric of America, and almost everyone, and every business, receives incentives from the government in one form or another.

For data centers, Kansas SB98 was passed in 2025 and gives data centers who invest 250 million dollars or more, and conform to a number of stringent requirements, a sales tax exemption on most everything (except power generation equipment) for 20 years. This is a very powerful tax break, but it requires that the data center purchase power from an outside power provider, which is incredibly important as that translates to large power franchise fees being paid out to local governments from the power provider.

Data centers pay a variety of taxes & other income, including:

• Real Property Tax 

• Corporate Income Tax

• Sales Tax

• Tangible Personal Property Tax

• Indirectly:

  • • Electric Power Franchise Fee

    • Payroll Taxes on Employees

• Negotiated:

  • • PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes)

    • Community incentive package

Data center economic impact:

• Initial:

  • Constructions jobs/community hosting outside workers

  • Local suppliers & subcontractors

  • Infrastructure upgrades (roads, electrical grid, fiber data connections, etc.)

• Ongoing:

  • Taxes & other negotiated income

  • Community incentive package

  • Employees (well paid, but generally 20-100 people)

  • Outside contractors

Community incentive packages:

Data center operators also provide significant benefits through incentive packages negotiated with municipalities that can include funding for schools or public infrastructure projects.

In multiple cases, hyper-scalers have funded renewable energy plants and created workforce development programs in areas where they operate.

As part of the AWS $10 billion data center campus investment in Mississippi, the company developed STEM-focused workforce training and career awareness programs for K-12 school systems and funded the state’s first utility-scale wind farm.

Resources

🔵  Brookings: Turning the data center boom into long-term, local prosperity

🔵  Hutch Chamber List of Incentives

🔵  State of Kansas: Sales Tax Exemptions

🔵  State of Kansas: Property Tax Abatements

🔵  Kansas Commerce: Business Incentives & Services

Data centers produce noise

• • 1. Internally from computer fans, UPS battery systems, HVAC & rack cooling.

    2. Internally when generators are in use, with external exhaust noise as well.

    3. Externally from cooling units.

    4. Internally and externally from inverters, transformers, and switching equipment.

• Most existing data centers are quiet and you might not even know they're there.

• Some existing data centers can be somewhat noisy and bother residential neighbors.

• Internal noise is a concern for data center workers, and has minimal impact on external noise levels.

• Noise is a physical design issue that can be addressed through proper engineering. While each data center is unique, data centers are not inherently noisy. They can and should be thoroughly acoustically modeled before construction, and tested after completion.

• Regulators can specify noise limits and can require regular 3rd party testing. They can specify limits in dBA which focuses on more mid-range tones, or dBC which focuses on lower tones.  They can also specify that multi-octave testing and standards be in place to test at a variety of isolated frequencies. Spectrum analysis could be required as well.

• Ideally data centers should not be built next to residential neighbors; they should be located in industrial zones, away from residential.

• A sound study should be required before construction, and a follow-up independent testing within 60 days of operations to confirm the facility meets the standard. Annual testing thereafter recommended.

Infrasound

• Sound below 20hz that is inaudible to most people.

• Infrasound is produced by a wide variety of mechanical and natural systems, including traffic.

• Infrasound is difficult to measure because low frequencies have very long wavelengths. Sound at these frequencies easily bypasses standard microphones and is heavily disrupted by light surface breezes, requiring specialty equipment to isolate the signal.

• Extremely loud (over 140 db) infrasound can hurt people.

• Data centers produce infrasound that is very low in volume.

• Data centers are NOT problematic for humans, with regards to infrasound.

Resources

🔵  Infrasound issues are fake

🔵  Quiet Data Centers: Acoustic Design Modeling for New Builds

🔵  Data Center Modeling Noise Study Requirements

🔵  Infrasound -Wikipedia Article

🔵  Communities Are Raising Noise Pollution Concerns About Data Centers

🔵  Frequency-Weightings for Sound Level Measurements

We have elected leaders and planning and zoning folks whose job it is to make sure our County isn't overwhelmed by any one entity.

AND, property rights matter. It is the landowners' land, and the landowners' decision to participate or not. 

Data centers are the absolute most optimized use of land physically possible. There are no other large buildings that are crammed as full as possible with objects that have been optimized down to the literal atom to deliver the absolute most performance possible.

Northern Virginia has 13% of all global data center capacity, and there Loudoun County has by far the largest concentration. But data centers only take up 3% of Loudoun’s land, and they generate 38% of all county general fund revenue.

America isn’t lacking in land. It is estimated that by 2030, all data centers in America will occupy about 1,400 square miles. This is about 0.3% as much as America’s prime farmland. The vast majority of this will be land around the data center, the buildings themselves will collectively take up about 25 square miles, 0.005% of America’s prime farmland.

Resources

🔵  Farm Progress: Data center dilemma

🔵  Data center land use issues are fake

🔵  Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of the AI Boom

In a closed loop data center, which is what would probably be allowed in water scarce Kansas, waste water will be minimal and consist of: 

• Reverse Osmosis (RO) rejected water: If a data center treats its incoming water to improve quality, the RO process produces a reject stream containing the removed impurities. 

• System Flushing and Refills: Closed-loop systems require occasional flushing and refilling to maintain equipment integrity and heat transfer efficiency.

• Facility Processes: General facility operations, such as staff restrooms or cleaning, can contribute minor amounts of wastewater.

Real-time monitoring of water flows and quality is now feasible and becoming part of data center best practices – for example, installing sensors to continuously check for any leak, abnormal usage spike, or water chemistry issue. 

Such proactive monitoring gives an extra layer of protection to the community’s water. It’s essentially applying the same diligence to water as data centers already do to energy and uptime monitoring.

Data centers may use biocides (to prevent bacterial growth), corrosion inhibitors (such as phosphates), and other chemicals in their cooling loops. If not properly treated during system flushing, these can be discharged into the municipal sewer system.

Some data centers are going a step further and implementing on-site wastewater treatment or recycling. This is yet another area that regulations could address.

For instance, Google’s Georgia data center not only uses reclaimed water for cooling but also treats its own wastewater on-site to a level that it doesn’t need to send it to the municipal sewer at all. By treating and then reusing or safely releasing water themselves, data centers can greatly reduce the burden on public infrastructure. This kind of innovation may become standard in water-stressed regions: the data center of the future might have a built-in water recycling plant, ensuring almost no drop of water leaves it without being cleaned and reused.

Resources

🔵  Florida Water & Pollution Control: Myths vs. Reality: Data Centers And Water Usage

🔵  Closed-Loop Cooling: Water Saver or Chemical Time Bomb?