Impacts
What Data Centers Mean for Your Community.
Data centers are being built across the country at a pace few communities have seen before. They are often described as clean, modern facilities that bring jobs and investment. Some do bring benefits. But these are large techno industrial sites, and they affect a community’s water, electric bills, air, land, and quality of life in ways that are not always explained up front.
Communities have a right to understand what is being proposed before they approve it. What the facility is, who will operate it, what it will use, and who it will serve? How does this impact our future economic growth? Those are reasonable questions to ask of any major project, from a mall, prison, power plant to a pipeline.
Be informed and be ready to protect your community from the economic, environmental, and social harms of data centers.
First – Who benefits and who pays?
Before weighing any of the many impacts, start with the question communities ask about any large project: what is this, and who is it for? Data centers are built for profits in a national and global computing market and not for the towns they sit in. Often the customer, or “tenant,” is never named publicly, and the operator is a holding company whose owner isn’t disclosed. The permanent jobs left after construction are usually few. The water, pollution, power, and land it uses, however, are local and lasting. So a handful of plain questions are worth answering before a project is approved:
- Who will own and operate it, and who is the tenant?
- What will it actually be used for? What are the outputs for this community?
- How many permanent local jobs will it create?
- What does the community get in return for the water, power, and land it uses?
- Can those promises be enforced if they aren’t kept?
The sections below lay out the AI and data center impacts in detail. Keep all these questions in mind as you read. They are what decide whether a project is a good deal for your community.
This page is a starting point. Each section below explains one type of impact in plain terms, with the facts and sources behind it, so you can decide for yourself what it means for your community.
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Types of Impacts
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Water Use and Supply
A single large data center can use millions of gallons a day, straining local wells, rivers, and reservoirs.
Cooling and consumption, Lifecycle of water from parts manufacturing to power grid water footprint, evaporation loss, chemical discharge, drought strain.
Cost to Taxpayers and Ratepayers
The jobs are few and the tax breaks are large and your electric bill goes up.
Ratepayer cost-shift, transmission and grid buildout, equipment bidding wars, tax incentives, job-count reality, water/sewer infrastructure expansion, roadway buildout. Gas lock in and build out.
Public Health and Air Quality
Backup generators, turbines, and cooling chemicals release pollutants into the air nearby families breathe.
Generator and turbine emissions, PM2.5 and NOx, chemical storage and exposure, PFAS. Gas and fracking.
Land, Farmland, and Natural Resources
Hundreds of acres of farmland and forest are cleared and paved over, permanently.
Greenfield siting, forest and wetland loss, ecosystem-services loss, construction impact, e-waste. Thermal Islands. Climate change
Noise, Quality of Life and Community Impacts
Round-the-clock noise, light, and years of construction change what it’s like to live nearby.
Ongoing operations changing culture, content rules, and contributing to problematic human rights abuses. Noise, light, views, mental-health and quality-of-life strain, labor conditions, copyright theft, displacement, surveillance and human rights abuses.
Transparency and Accountability
Communities are often asked to approve a project without knowing who will operate it or what it’s for.
NDAs, undisclosed tenants, money in politics, surveillance, reporting gaps, who benefits, the questions communities have a right to ask.
Risks to Women, Children, and Families
The same computing power can be used to create AI child-abuse images, “nudify” apps, and scams that target kids and seniors.
AI-generated CSAM, school nudification, teen sextortion, voice-cloning and romance/investment fraud.
Data Center Problems and Impacts
Please log in to comment on specific posts. To access recorded presentations or upcoming events on data center impact studies and community testimony, join Halt the Harm Network. Participate help document the harms and work on solutions.
Please Contribute & Address the Impacts of Data Centers
Because it’s new and ever changing, AI specific risks may not be mitigated by traditional efforts to regulate or protect community interests. Network leaders have access to special tools and expert help in their campaigns. Contact us to get connected to an expert who can help.
Your experience, stories, and expertise are requested. Communities everywhere are facing the threats of data centers. Hundreds of leaders are sharing their experience and learning from each other in Halt the Harm Network.
These pages are maintained by leaders in the network. If you see something incomplete, lacking specificity, or otherwise needing edits, please let us know. This project is here to serve you and other leaders organizing on the issue.
