Slashdot Mirror
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.
"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."
The people promoting the Delaware data center lied to everyone at nearly every possible opportunity, which is why it was so easy to rouse the community against them.
For example, they claimed that their data center would employ lots of local people, when this simply wasn't true. The whole place was going to be nearly lights-out - there'd probably be as many janitors as technicians.
They also misstated the entire purpose of the plant - the so-called data center was always a trojan horse intended to allow them to gain exemptions from zoning laws and secure taxpayer funds to build a noisy, polluting power plant in a totally unsuitable location. That power plant was purposely outsized for the data center in the original plan, and more than doubled in size after it'd gained its initial approvals, and probably would have been built even bigger given the size of the property they were going to put it on. The intention was always to use tax dollars to undercut existing energy providers and sell electricity to local citizens and businesses, the data center was never anything but a front operation.
How do I know all this? Well, I do live here, and I have built three data centers professionally. The whole thing was a total con job from start to finish. That's the reality, and the University of Delaware's investigation revealed this and caused them to withdraw their support from the project (the other backers withdrew their support only because public outcry was calling attention to the many secret side deals they'd made with the power plant builders, that are protected by non-disclosure contracts).
I can't comment on Paris or other places where similar things have happened; maybe those data centers were real. The Delaware one was a power plant disguised as a data center and the people proposing it were liars and con men who were trying to loot the public tax coffers.
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, the article is making reference to giant 100+ foot towers, in wide-cleared rights-of-way, refusing to bury cables, and generally abusing the locals.
And if that's how they want to do this, they should in no way be surprised when people oppose them.
Bury the cables. Don't devalue people's property with giant transmission towers.
But don't expect sympathy when you come in, hide who you are, underplay the impact, and crap all over the neighbors. That pretty much says "this company is ran by assholes who don't give a fuck about the locals".
In which case communities are right to send a big giant "fuck you" back in return.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.