[slabity]

> modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many local jobs.

The factories in Maine employ thousands of people. Bath Iron Works alone has over 7k employees.

The Lewiston datacenter that was planned to be built was expected to employ less than 30.

[unicornporn]

Was just about to say the same, but without the numbers. Thanks for providing. People aren't stupid and they find (AI) datacenters to be a net minus to their local communities.

[j2kun]

My favorite class of HN comment: bringing concreteness to a vibes fight.

[harimau777]

Perhaps unfortunately, vibes are part of being human. Ignore them at your peril.

[bluefirebrand]

Vibes can be safely ignored when they are disproven by easily accessible facts

[joquarky]

Facts are ultimately just vibes that pass a cultural filter.

[DrewADesign]

Bingo. Data centers are a net negative wherever they are. Giant, employ far fewer people than a grocery store after they’re built, crank up electricity costs, use tons of water, air pollution if it’s self-powered, noise pollution (it’s really worth watching Benn Jordan’s video on infrasound,) ugly… the only local entities that win are the landowner and the municipality that collects taxes on them. Though I’ve seen some astonishingly misinformed politicians offering big tax incentives for data centers not realizing that they employ so few people. From what I hear, even much of the construction is done by flown-in contractors with experience doing it elsewhere.

The people that own these data centers have only themselves to blame. They’ve been obnoxious, at scale, for so long that damn near everybody knows how much they suck, and they’re losing their ability to railroad locals into eating their turd sandwiches.

Edit: I know it’s gauche to talk about votes here, but this comment trended upward consistently for 45 minutes. In much less than 10 minutes, it collected more than half that amount in downvotes. I’d eat my hat if there wasn’t some kind of organized/automated brigading happening here.

Edit again: Now close to 70% gone. Not exactly surprising given the forum, but pretty depressing nonetheless.

[marcosdumay]

> Data centers are a net negative wherever they are.

They really shouldn't be.

There is a need for them and they aren't inherently damaging. There's no reason they can't be placed under some environmental regulations that cancel all their negatives, at least on some places. And they would still pay taxes.

But no, datacenter owners are using their connections to remove any regulation instead.

[scoofy]

Obviously the solution is to tax them instead of ban them so they end up dispersing income to the surrounding areas. The entire point though is that they won't get built where they are taxed, and eventually, through regulatory capture or governance capture, they'll get built without having to compensate for their exteralities.

The cynicism of residents is reasonable. They've have to be highly educated to actually understand the implications of what they're doing and how that revenue can be distributed. America's decline lends itself toward small-town corruption, where patronage is more important than communitarianism, due to large and accelerating net worth inequality, and an economy where outcomes are based on inheritance over labor.

This explains the logic behind an outright ban. You don't have to be vigilant about corruption and the principle-agent problem if the thing is just banned.

[order-matters]

>The entire point though is that they won't get built where they are taxed

I dont think this is entirely true. Maybe not the first wave of data centers, but there are a lot of factors that go into the cost calc and its possible that it would still be worth it to build them even if taxed.

[BeetleB]

He's not saying it's economically unfeasible to build where taxed. He's saying they'll simply build elsewhere where they won't be taxed.

About a decade ago, a bunch of data center companies got fantastic deals with my city (low/no tax). People are pretty upset about it. A few years in there was a report on how many people they employeed. I think combined it was under 10 who lived in the area.

[order-matters]

im saying it would not only be economically feasible but economically optimal. power generation and reliability is an important factor. Even just the cost of electric varies, and might change after a data center is put in. in the case they need to provide their own power, you now have all the costs associated with power generation in that area too.

there are real competitive differences to locations and the best locations will likely be able to afford to tax. lets say they all go solar power, then places that are good for solar and it doesnt snow or have as many cloudy days relative to other places will be able to tax more than other places and possibly still have it be the most economical choice.

They also cant build them all in the same spot or move them that easily after they are built. It might be smarter to agree to be taxed and have an amicable relationship with the community you build the data center in rather than risk them changing the law after its already built because youre screwing them over.

[scoofy]

I mean, just look at what happened with Foxconn in Racine, WI: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/what-happened-to-foxco...

The community is a heck of a lot poorer now because they were convinced to offer incentives for a factory that never came. Once these firms can dangle hope in return for tax treatment or infrastructure, then you have a zero-sum game between townships where the winner — if there is a winner — ends up being the firm first, and the loser — if there is a loser, will be the township first.

[AgentK20]

Unfortunately it’s a race to the bottom in most of America: If you pass such regulations locally or in your state, the data centers will simply choose to not build in your area of authority (county/state). Unless we were to pass sweeping, nation-wide regulations (which this administration is aggressively against because they believe we are in an AI arms race with China), those regulations/bans just drive the data centers elsewhere.

[bryanlarsen]

Maine obviously wouldn't have a problem with that, this law indicates they want them somewhere other than Maine. Environmental regulations that are as good as a ban seem far preferable to an outright ban, IMO. There's a large segment of the population that see outright bans as oppressive but support environmental regulations.

[cucumber3732842]

>Environmental regulations that are as good as a ban seem far preferable to an outright ban, IMO. There's a large segment of the population that see outright bans as oppressive but support environmental regulations.

So basically steal legitimacy from real environmentalists by applying their label to something that's not really motivated by environmentalism but can be construed that way?

"They don't actually want what I'm selling so I'm gonna dress it up as something else, they'll never know"

AreWeTheBaddies.jpg

The other problem you're gonna have is that this isn't an original thought. You're at least 20yr late to the party. So, so, so much absolute garbage has sailed under the flag of environmentalism that the public is starting to be more critical (see for example the kerfuffle over wind turbines off Rhode Island) and it's not unforeseeable that eventually the environmentalists are gonna have some sort of purge or reformation or reversion to more traditional environmentalism and serving corporate interests in order to reclaim some lost respect/legitimacy. Trying to sail "obviously not primarily about the environment" stuff under the flag of environmentalism is only gonna hasten that.

[Shitty-kitty]

Unfortunately enviromental law has become a favorite tool of industry to stop, delay, increase costs to competition. Industry funded pretend enviriomentalist groups bringing up friviolous lawsuits has done much harm to the movement.

[bryanlarsen]

Environmentalists are going to get blamed for the data center ban in Maine either way.

[DrewADesign]

But people probably wouldn’t have a problem with them building a data center in central Aroostook. Nobody making these regulations wants to simply stop data centers from being built anywhere— they’re trying to stop people from building them where it will really suck to have them, like densely populated Lewiston. I actually left tech to work in manufacturing. I know the value it provides and how much it can negatively impact others. Big companies want to build this shit near population centers because it’s more convenient, profitable, easier to hire people, etc. Tough cookies, I say.

[overfeed]

> There is a need for them and they aren't inherently damaging.

One solution: local taxes on the economic value generated by the data center. MNCs love to play accounting games, so a simple formula based on metered GWh multiplied by reported worldwide revenue with a scaling factor a fraction of a percentage. This fund should be ring-fenced be address whatever externalities are introduced by the data center, including electric bill subsidies, infra maintenance, and funding independent oversight.

[hackable_sand]

What's the need?

[bitexploder]

Perhaps they are simply not taxed enough to benefit the community. If the local municipality is bearing a lot of these hidden costs, then perhaps the taxes need to be higher and directed at efforts that mitigate the worst of the problems. Water management solutions, air pollution management. Are there ways to mitigate the noise pollution? It seems like they should be taxed /more/ to help offset the negatives. There is surely a way to mitigate the problems. For example, can the noise pollution be addressed by forcing more green spaces around them, etc?

[bombcar]

Almost anything can be mitigated at some cost - but it has to be determined what those mitigations are, and then demand them.

Many municipalities are unequipped to deal with a "datacenter" because on paper it is the same as an office building (that draws a lot of power), where it should be treated like an industrial site (rail yard, factory).

[bitexploder]

True. There likely needs to be some sort of templating handled by states. Each data center and location will be different and require assessment. This does drive costs up for the data center, but I don't see another fair way to handle it really.

[fc417fc802]

They get their own unique third category as unlike industrial sites there's no hazardous chemicals and even the noise pollution is substantially different in nature.

The old datacenters are analogous to office buildings that emit some unusual noise and consume large amounts of electricity.

The new ones (ie gigawatt class) consume enough electricity for ~1 million households and at minimum enough water for 100k households (but possibly many times that).

[bombcar]

Where does the water go afterwards? Is it evaporated? Sewer?

[fc417fc802]

I believe evaporative cooling is the norm (thus my "possibly many times that" remark doesn't apply) however theoretically they could provide hot water as a utility or (as you say) just dump it into the sewer. If located next to a river or the ocean they could conceivably dissipate it that way but I'm not aware of any examples.

It's the sort of externality that could be solved with a well placed megaproject. A related question to my mind is why we're building such expensive strategic assets in the open rather than under a mountain.

[trollbridge]

Evaporated. Given how the water cycle works, it should be expected it will be precipitated back as rain.

[ikr678]

Large industrial customers often have to sign up to load-shedding agreements wiith grid operators in times of peak grid load.

Can datacenters load shed when requested? If not, they should be paying a premium/spot market prices for power if they arent participating in load management.

[bombcar]

The one I toured (decades ago) and dual redundant multi-megawatt diesel generators (big boys, always ask for a tour when they’ll be testing them, it’s fun to hear them start).

Local utility would ask them to shunt to the generators now and then during potential rolling blackout situations.

[DrewADesign]

The city making money off of it doesn’t make the impact smaller. You can’t tax away the air pollution coming from a gas turbine running in a populated area.

[bitexploder]

That was my point. It doesn't all have to be taxes. It can also be agreed upon mitigation maintenance. Better filtration on gas turbines, etc. Green spaces to mitigate sound impact. I don't know, I am just wondering if there is a model that can be designed that makes a data center "balance" within its local environment instead of getting the opposite, tax incentives. Right now I agree, they get to socialize the costs and reap the benefits of building data centers to a large extent.

[DrewADesign]

That all sounds nice in theory, but does the Lewiston municipal government have the resources and expertise to determine what countermeasures would be effective? Would it be left up to the company paying for the mitigations to decide what’s reasonable? I think we know how that would turn out. Even in heavily regulated states, industrial pollution still heavily impacts people in the vicinity. They usually accept it because so many of them work there. This place was estimated to employ 30 people. We don’t even know if problems like infrasound are reasonably avoidable or mitigated, and it’s not like they can make more water. Additionally, the way the industry has conducted itself over the past decade has been abhorrent. There’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t try to circumvent every last shred of mitigation knowing the city has comparatively minuscule resources to fight it.

If we put them anywhere — and I’m not convinced we really need all of the data centers we have, let alone all the ones we’re building — they should not be in the middle of densely populated areas like Lewiston.

[order-matters]

youre starting a good conversation but as per typical internet fashion you are being critiqued as though your direction of thought is being presented as some sort of final solution.

i completely agree that we should be looking into modelling this in terms of what is possible to mitigate its impact and what does that look like with current technology and costs, and where would we need to develop new tech, and what would be the critical values to hit to consider mitigation a success

[rangestransform]

The fact that they need to use gas turbines at all is a tragic condemnation of how the US can’t build shit at all. We should be consuming more (green) energy to make our lives better, and rushing toward diminishing returns on energy consumption. Instead, we have this unholy alliance of (usually right wing) NIMBYs and (usually left wing) degrowthers that make it much more convenient to use a gas turbine than build renewable energy somewhere windy/sunny and plumb it in with some transmission lines. Renewable energy is way past the tipping point of being cheaper, the gas turbines are just there due to regulatory burden at all levels.

[DrewADesign]

Yeah, but unfortunately, here we are, and there are the companies that want to build these things in completely inappropriate areas because it’s more convenient.

[hermanzegerman]

They lobbied for tax exemptions for 10 years or longer in most cases. Which probably is the useful lifespan, from most of the stuff in there

[Anechoic]

noise pollution (it’s really worth watching Benn Jordan’s video on infrasound,)

Noise from data centers is a real issue, but Benn's measurements and analysis are not great (speeding up the sample rate to demonstrate frequency effects is just wrong, among other issues).

[jesse_ash]

It was a bit misleading in terms of the audibility of infrasonic noise, but I think he did a good job of highlighting some of the effects of infrasonic noise on QoL/health with the study towards the end. IIRC, he also recorded some regular human-range noise that I would personally find disruptive to have to live with (though this was a fair bit closer to the data center than the claimed range of infrasonic noise's effects)

[will4274]

- Datacenters don't use tons of water compared to just about any other business.

- It's not really fair to blame datacenters for using the municipality's electricity and then blame them again for being loud and generating electricity instead of using the municipality's electricity. Any given datacenter is only doing one of these.

- Presumably, the municipality's tax dollars benefit the people who live in the municipality in the form of better services

[sershe]

Doesn't this also apply to new housing? Strain on services per job created is probably even higher. The benefits are for someone currently not living here, just like data centers used for remote users. And if cheaper housing is available obnoxious poor people might move in. I think there should be a moratorium. Not in my backyard!

[DrewADesign]

I’m not sure who you’d expect to sway equating data centers to east coast urban housing during a giant, sustained housing crisis, but your obviously disingenuous argument is completely ridiculous.

[sershe]

At least my comment is not completely content free. How is it different?

First, the gp comment says the data center is not good for existing residents - obviously true for housing too, which you didn't refute.

Then it assumes statewide ban should be based on personal preference of local residents. That is just a definition of nimbyism. While in reality I am a YIMBY and the end was part sarcasm, I would genuinely prefer living next to a data center, rather than next to non immigrant poor in the US. I grew up lower middle class or poor by US standards, and also live in Seattle, lots of experience. So I say along with data centers we have a statewide ban on anyone who is lifetime net consumer of tax money anywhere near my backyard.

[andrepd]

> Though I’ve seen some astonishingly misinformed politicians offering big tax incentives for data centers

My national government is currently giving massive tax breaks for one of these. It's going to be, after all, "the biggest foreign investment in the country ever"...

[DrewADesign]

This thread is obviously being brigaded. Wiped out like 30 upvotes on one comment in no time. If you need to silence people talking about your company or favorite toy, maybe you should re-examine your life choices. Pathetic. Is there some polymarket nonsense going on here?

[beastman82]

I'm guessing the population of Lewiston would welcome an employer of 30 jobs

[DrewADesign]

So maybe someone can open a new sandwich shop and accomplish the same thing without screwing everybody else in the process. Not only that, Lewiston probably doesn’t have a glut of data center talent seeking employment —I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that not a single person living in Lewiston when a project like that was approved would be employed there.

[will4274]

The data center jobs are middle class. With progressive taxation, those 30 middle class jobs generate about 100 average people's worth of revenue. Presumably Lewiston has schools which could use the funds.

And presumably everybody in Lewiston already has lunch somewhere, so a new sandwich shop that was successful would put another lunch spot out of business, for a net zero jobs.

Edit: the larger point here is that jobs, particularly skilled jobs, don't grow on trees (much like money). New technologies and new jobs replace old technologies and old jobs. If you put a ban on new technologies and new jobs, you'll just have more unemployed people.

[DrewADesign]

Nobody that lives in Lewiston will get those jobs, and the people that get those jobs will almost certainly live in more upscale places nearby.

Tack a new building that size onto Bath Ironworks? That’s a huge boon. Heck even an Amazon warehouse would be an improvement. But a data center? For the people in Lewiston, it would be far more of a negative than a positive — and that’s the way it works in this country. We value money over people. If private equity, venture capitalists or huge corporations want something that you don’t want, you lose. Getting a policy win is a rarity and I’d be surprised if it didn’t get successfully challenged in court.

[will4274]

You forgot to include an argument in your comment. I cited specific positive impacts (tax revenue) but you just talked about negative impact in the abstract, without citing anything specific, and then went on a rant about how the world works.

[dawnerd]

A sandwich shop would also be infinitely more useful to the population.

[gmm1990]

Not if it drives up energy prices and makes other businesses that employ more people less competitive. Not saying that is the case but it’s certainly not a given

[unicornporn]

Are you saying that those thirty job will go to people currently living in Lewiston?

If so, thirty jobs are on the plus side. What's on the minus side?

[tejtm]

that would translate to three townees for janitors the rest would be durn furiners from away *

* further down east than Lewiston but, there was a time I was the damm foreigner from the big city.

[mrguyorama]

The three weed stores that opened up in the past week employs more people than that and produces more tax revenue.

[john_strinlai]

imagine how many other 30-job employers could fit on the same land that the datacenter would take up.

a mcdonalds is probably 1% of the land and employs more than 30 people.

(the # of jobs angle is not the right approach if you are a proponent of new datacenters. there are much stronger arguments to be made)

[andsoitis]

> a mcdonalds is probably 1% of the land and employs more than 30 people.

Fast food chains are damaging to human health.

[john_strinlai]

neat!

replace "mcdonalds" with "specialty health foods" or "flower shop" or "independent book store" or whatever and my points remains unchanged: job numbers arent an argument in favor of datacenters, they are an argument against them.

[physhster]

Less than 30 makes no sense. It's easily in the hundred if you account for shifts and the specialized jobs required.

[jcrawfordor]

The number the developer gave in a press release was "20-30." I find that reasonable as a very large Facebook data center near me has a permanent staff of around 50. Keep in mind that these large DCs use contractors for the majority of the work, which unfortunately doesn't really help with employment because the contractors mostly come in from out of state (there is a HUGE temp labor market for traveling IT technicians and skilled crafts get hired mostly from big national outfits that just send whatever crew is available next). It is good for the hotel business though.

[physhster]

You have no idea how much maintenance is required. Just replacing hard drives, not even counting server repairs, new servers installation, network infrastructure installation and maintenance, power distribution, generator engineering, water treatment etc etc

[jcrawfordor]

And that's all stuff that they bring in out of state contractors for. I know, it sounds odd, but this is pretty normal for any large industrial site.

[bombcar]

Once it's built, it basically runs itself.

You have a guard, some remote hands, maintenance, maybe additional security or two, times 4 for the various shifts. 30 sounds about right.

Even 20 years ago the datacenters I worked with often had fewer employees onsite than "visitors" - because they rented out racks.

[physhster]

You're confusing colos and first-party data centers. A colo mostly relies on its customers for installs and maintenance. Google, MS, FB, Apple etc own the entire building so all the functions are local: server install and maintenance, network install and maintenance, generator maintenance, electricians, water treatment in some cases... That's very easily in the hundreds if not thousands for big sites.

Count the cars here: 36.242186561973, -95.32619746715035

[pixl97]

Yep, and anything outside of that is contracted groups that come in from outside. Maybe a hotel in the area would get a little more business, but it won't be much.

[DrewADesign]

From the Maine Monitor:

[…]the data center would have employed only about 30 workers, the city estimated.

[pj_mukh]

"We are for the jobs the comet provides" - Don't Look up.

I'm not trying to be facile here but let's be honest the environmental concerns are silly. I don't want to hear about electricity shortages from a state hellbent on NIMBY-ing itself out of power[1],[2].

I understand people are threatened by this technology, the tech CEOs' loud pronouncements can cause that and that these arguments are basically threat responses. I buy that. But to hear otherwise smart people say non-chemical industrial factories are a serious environmental threat but if they provided more jobs it would be fine while everyone nods along, feels like I'm living in an Adam McKay satire.

[1]: https://www.mainepublic.org/politics/2025-04-08/bill-removin...

[2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/maine-voters-reject-q...

[slabity]

Don't Look Up is about ignoring expert consensus on a clear threat, not about rejecting benefits out of fear. For the analogy to land, you'd need overwhelming evidence that these data centers are net-positive for host communities, but that's exactly what's in dispute.

You're right that there's tension between 'not enough power' and 'no new heavy loads' but it's not hypocritical to argue that megawatts of power should be allocated towards 7k jobs rather than a few dozen if possible. That's exactly the kind of tradeoff a power-constrained state should be explicitly making. The logic behind it is not satirical, it's just triage.

On top of that, this is not a blanket ban of AI datacenters. It's a temporary blocking of any new datacenters that require more than 20 megawatts until late 2027 pending a PUC study on how these datacenters will affect their existing grid. It also creates a new council for researching and coordinating the creation of new datacenters, so this really doesn't seem like any sort of NIMBY action here.

Honestly the only major issue I have with the bill is that it neglects to distinguish self-powered facilities that don't provide much strain on the grid. Though it could be argued that water consumption of these centers might be the reason for it.

[rolandog]

> Though it could be argued that water consumption of these centers might be the reason for it.

Indeed! And we also shouldn't forget the CO2 and NOx emissions from gas-powered turbines (on some)... Also IIRC 9+°C warming in the surrounding areas, loud droning noise, and I seem to recall that there might have also been local water well pollution.