[jimmygrapes]

I prefer to use the hospital analogy. Locally, the water concerns are a big deal but a lot of people in my community are riled up about the potential need for diesel backup generators because of the noise pollution. They are not wrong and it's good to consider, but they are at this point grasping for reasons that would not (and have not) been concerns for other large footprint projects like hospitals with similar infrastructure needs.

[fluoridation]

And you don't understand why what's tolerated of a hospital may not be tolerated of other kinds of buildings?

[yellowapple]

Here in Reno the anti-datacenter crowd has been extending that tolerance to the local casinos and golf courses (of both of which there are many more than we arguably need). If the choice is between running servers to keep the Internet going v. letting poor schmucks get swindled out of their money on the slots, I'm picking the servers over the slots any day.