Terrific long-form reporting by Lauren Feiner for The Verge on the impact of data centers on municipalities, both positive and negative. It’s the first of an apparent three-part series The Verge is calling “The Center Will Not Hold,” with Utah and Arizona “coming soon.” This one is headlined “Is This the Future of America?” and is about Loudoun County, Virginia (home to MAE-East, for old internet denizens). (Gift link in case you’re hit with a paywall.)

A couple of excerpts:

Within the past few years, data centers have been elevated from an unremarkable part of daily life in Loudoun to something that many residents now think about every day. For some, it’s the constant hum they hear from their decks; for others, it’s the transmission towers that loom over their favorite green space, or the surprise call from their energy utility that one of those towers could go up in their own backyard. While residents recognize that data centers have brought a lot of prosperity to the county, they’re beginning to wonder how much more they can take.

And:

Over the past 20 years, though, Loudoun residents have seen a direct impact of data centers on their lives, whether they knew it or not. Real property tax rates declined dramatically, while property values have gone up in some communities as much as 182 percent in the last decade, even at residences close to data centers, according to county officials. The county has paved smooth roads and built sprawling athletic fields, a recreation center with an Olympic-size pool, and an average of nearly one and a half state-of-the-art public school buildings every year for the past 15 years, all thanks largely to the revenue generated by the county taxes data center companies have to pay anytime they get new equipment. And while data centers have gotten a reputation for creating relatively few jobs once they’re constructed, the county says that for every job inside those buildings, three and a half non-construction jobs are “supported” throughout the rest of the state economy. Those include ongoing maintenance at data centers, like electricians or HVAC technicians, and employment at other tech companies that move to Loudoun to be near where the data lives.

Julie Bolthouse, “a longtime Loudoun resident”:

Today, Bolthouse is the director of land use at PEC and helps lead a coalition of Virginia groups that advocate for stronger protections, tracking, and transparency around data center development. Bolthouse isn’t dispositionally anti-data center, nor does she want to see existing ones in the area torn down or shut off. But she does advocate for a pause on new development. “This industry is kind of creating a narrative that they’re up against communities, and that there’s a community backlash, and we just need to explain to the communities the benefits of data centers,” she says. “But what they’re really up against is physics. They’re up against the reality of what it takes to build out gigawatts of power, and the impact of building out gigawatts of power has direct impacts on people.” […]

“It’s not about trying to get rid of the existing data centers. These data centers are here. They’re running. I don’t want them to go anywhere,” Bolthouse says. “The question isn’t, ‘Do we need data centers?’ The question is, ‘Is it worth threatening our air quality, threatening our water supply, and throwing our communities into chaos, and taking people’s private land for transmission lines to get it?’”

I wouldn’t wish proximity to a data center on anyone—I wouldn’t want one in my backyard—but I understand their importance. Early in my career, I spent plenty of time in tiny data centers (more like data rooms) and I know what being inundated with the constant hum of computer fans and HVAC systems and power supplies does to your nervous system—and how utterly, indescribably relieving it is to exit those rooms into relative silence. (I think it’s one reason so many IT and computer people find themselves escaping far onto oceans, deep into forests, or high atop mountains. Silence is golden.)

This is a refreshingly nuanced and balanced look at the tradeoffs of building these data centers. They offer tremendous benefit to communities and society while also imposing a tremendous burden on communities and society. A thoughtful, considered approach is mandatory.