They’re probably inevitable anyway. Nobody likes to live near any kind of industry. For me as a kid that was dairy farms. Fucking horrible. Nobody lining up to close them down though. Hog farms are also terrible. Chickens I can imagine too, never seen one personally though.

Even something relatively innocuous like an orange grove. Rented a house in one before. Peaceful most of the time, free citrus. But when it got too cold they’d burn diesel in these little tower things and run a wind machine (like a giant reverse windmill) that was loud as fuck all night.

Had some relatives that lived near some kind of paper pulping plant. Guess if that sucked or not?

Now that I think about it, the local environment not smelling like absolute shit is probably a relatively recent development.

We have so much vacant industrial land in the rust belt (so-called "brownfields"), with good access and utility infrastructure, why not build the data centers there? Why do they need to go on farmland in the countryside?

I lived near mega diaries and oil fields growing up. Depending on the wind you either smelled manure or sulfur. People used to say "smells like money" because ag and oil were the source of jobs in the area.

We had a cake/chocolate factory near my town growing up, on some windy days it smelled really nice.

I also believe they’re inevitable. Capital will find places without opposition and build them. There are thousands of jurisdictions in the US and capital usually wins.

I’ll take data centers over pig farms pulp mills any day of the week.

Pretty much. Mushroom farms smell like shit when the wind turns. Even just normal farms smell like manure at various times of the year. Amazon fulfillment centres are hideous and create a lot of traffic in the surrounding area. There's a reason building industry near residential in the SimCity series causes residential property values to drop.