It’s a good thing that businesses can make investment plans with legible rules to follow. Too many communities are blocking data centers for no good reason, and this preempts NIMBYs and unreasonable local opposition.

“What about my water?”- not an issue in this area.

“What about my electric bill?”- we’re signing long term contracts with local power companies or building out our own capacity; we eat the marginal costs and don’t increase your bill.

“What about noise?”- we’re far enough away from the nearest person that they cannot hear us; fans are x decibels at y distance; not a problem.

“I saw on Facebook that data centers poison the water and spy on me”- seek help, you cannot block us from building out and giving you oodles of tax money for this nonsense reason.

> giving you oodles of tax money for this nonsense reason.

You've never heard of tax avoidance, have you?

https://itep.org/trump-meta-tesla-alphabet-amazon-obbba-taxe...

I don’t think it counts as NIMBYism if you don’t want it in yours or anybody’s backyard, ever. I would describe that as principled opposition.

Also, what happens when we don’t need such enormous data centers anymore? How many communities in the U.S. are saddled with enormous dead malls while the developers walk away with zero liability?

"We don't want you here" sounds like a perfectly good reason to me.

This research presentation from Benn Jordan will hopefully change your mind on the noise issue and its consequences. I highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo

There is an incredibly good reason not to have datacenters in montana - a whole lot of the additional load will be from colstrip - one of the dirtiest coal mines left in the United States.