Not Just Paris: Community Activists Target Data Centers (datacenterfrontier.com)

1sockchuck writes: This week's case in which a Paris data center lost its license isn't an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of disputes in which community groups have fought data center projects, citing objections to generators or power lines. Data center site selection is often a secretive process, with cloud builders using codenames to cloak their identity. Community groups are using social media, blogs, research and media outreach to bring public attention to the process and voice their concerns. Protests from a Delaware group led to the cancellation of a data center project that planned to build a cogeneration plant. In Virginia, a coalition has organized to oppose a power line for an Amazon Web Services data center. Everyone wants their Internet, just not in their backyard.

Comments

NIMBY

[Fire_Wraith]

"We want all the best things that modern life has to offer, we just want someone else to have to suffer the minor downsides and mild inconveniences of having things like data centers or power plants or landfills or offshore windmills spoiling our pristine view."

Re:NIMBY

[tripleevenfall]

Building a brand new building is not practical for many businesses, and is not cost effective for most.

It's also not practical or cost effective to build a datacenter that is ONLY a datacenter. It usually makes more sense to have people working there, which means you need qualified tech workers who are willing to commute to wherever your data center is. "unpopulated areas" are not known for this.

Re:These don't all seem unreasonable

[gstoddart]

Yeah, bury your cables, don't put towers over people's houses, don't ask us for property for your data center ... not treating the people near you like shit isn't unreasonable at all.

Don't come in all secret like, hide who you really are, and choose a way to do it which impacts the people who live there any more than you need to.

When billion dollar corporations want to act like assholes to save a few bucks, they get no sympathy when people get pissed off at them. People don't want to be abused so multi-billion dollar corporations can do their data center as cheap as possible and piss off the neighbors.

Spinning this like "boo hoo, the poor companies can't build data centers" is complete bullshit. Stop treating neighborhoods like ugly industrial sites and have some respect. Maybe they'll even be supportive.