This headline seems misleading at best. There was, as far as I can tell reading both this piece and the original reporting in the WSJ[0], no community vote for or against data center construction. What appears to have happened is that Amazon simply followed the existing permitting rules for other industrial construction, “Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.”[0] The existing zoning laws did not require a public vote to receive a permit, so I don’t understand in what way a public vote was “circumvented”. It’s certainly fair for residents to ask for more input in general on permitting or zoning, and even to place explicit restriction on data centers going forward, but it seems like what people want is an ex post facto law, which is nigh universally bad law.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and waiting to read an example. This might just be the first I’ve read.
> “…by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago”
I live on Long Island NY. Here on LI and Upstate there are a surprising number of former industrial land and abandoned buildings. It’s the whole package—loss of jobs, years of post-industrial decline, lost revenue and old rules on the books. Ripe for a new industry which, like remote workers, doesn’t need to be located next to the larger communities where their work product is consumed. Gentrification or redevelopment of agricultural land into boiling data centers are the outcomes.
> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy …” Bozzo said.
It’s a dirty fight. All sides.
Amazon wants to build on cheap land, and not on parcels the cities want cleaned up.
I’m wondering why these data centers are such a nuisance. We’ve had data centers for years. Is it just the fast growth and number? And is there good public data on their sustainability regarding water and electricity and environmental impact? If cities have failed, it’s turning a blind eye from collecting this data.
> I’m wondering why these data centers are such a nuisance. We’ve had data centers for years. Is it just the fast growth and number?
That's likely a big part of it.
AI data centers need an order of magnitude or more power than a cloud data center, and a lot more are being built.
Before with the lower power requirements and with slow and steady growth a data center project was handled by the utilities just like they handled a new factory or a new large shopping mall. The utility might need to add substation of some local transmission lines but it wasn't a big deal.
An AI data center uses so much more power that even if the utility has enough capacity overall to cover it, the AI data center needs that all at one site meaning quit a bit more new infrastructure needs to be built.
Now add in the number being built. The utility now is much less likely to have generation capacity to cover them, meaning the utility will have to buy electricity on the open market which is more expensive.
Another factor is that many AI data centers cannot wait for that and so find sources of energy other than the grid to tide them over for the several years it might take before the grid is ready for them. These sources are often not good for their neighbors.
Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society.
Resource utilization: power and water.
Pollution: natural gas turbines on site and broadly the pollution of power generation, and noise pollution.
Subsidies to multitrillion dollar companies at the expense of taxpayers.
Impact on local community: traffic, construction, impact to surrounding home prices.
Lies about the benefits of datacenters: talk of how much money it might bring governments, while no dividends are paid to citizens impacted by the negative effects above.
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If a datacenter was quiet, powered by renewables, water-efficient in a place without water supply insecurity, and funded by the builders instead of taxpayers, most complaints would be solved.
These operators are in such a rush to build that they are ignoring all decency and resident concern in many cases.
> Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society.
I think this is the real reason, while the others don't make that much sense when we really think about it.
Large datacenters are normally limited to industrial zoned land, so they're "competing" for space with other industrial projects, and their externalities are typically mild compared to other industrial projects.
Most datacenters create little traffic, minimal pollution, and no bad odors. They do use substantial power and water, but they pay for it (though in certain cases the economics aren't perfect).
I'd much rather live near a datacenter than a dump, sewage facility, refinery, etc. etc.
"subsidies" implies the number is negative. Now it sounds like you're moving the goalposts from "datacenters are getting subsidized" to something vague like "they're not paying enough".
Two things can be true: the construction can be technically legal and at clear odds with community opinion.
I mean, yes. Amazon can likely do this. But is this strategy really in keeping with its long term interests? I mean, look at the comments in the rest of this very topic. Do you want a communist insurrection? This is literally how you get communist insurrections. People are fucking pissed, and the bourge^M^M^M^M funding-focused growth-minded startup set here are throwing gasoline on the fire.
I guess i don't understand why reneging on a binding agreement is the cool thing here. They went through all the requirements. If the requirements should now change that's fine. But hold yourself to the agreement you made. Or appropriately terminate it
The "noise and pollution" of a datacenter are bordering on nonexistent. The same goes for water use concerns and more. The environmental concerns are extremely overblown - but NIMBYs really don't need much to get going.
This is going to sound like I'm flipping sides in this thread: but yeah, absolutely. Otherwise people in Gilroy would have hated datacenters when the planning started and Amazon would have built in Fresno or wherever.
Really both sides are insane in this battle. People are angry about social change, injustice, perceived loss of status and are taking out those frustrations on totems like "Buildings Owned by Big Tech". Which is wrong. But it's equally wrong to ignore those concerns and try to align with their political enemies, which only makes this worse. (We saw exactly this thing happen with the vaccine madness just half a decade ago!)
To wit: we're all going to hell in a handbasket and this community is 100% as much at fault as the big data opposition front.
6 years of planning can be thrown away if the community is just now becoming aware of the potential impact.
It’s not on the community to adhere to the companies looking to make a profit while ignoring how their presence affects those around them. Quite the opposite really.
Your premise is a straw man so maybe keep your opinion on the intelligence of others to yourself.
Plenty of journalists are eating well reporting on the negative externalities actively felt by residents who live near data centers. It is not hard to find if you look.
5G towers have no negative externalities except looking kinda dorky. In fact, they're nice; they improve your reception. The same cannot be said for data centers.
(Instead of just downvoting this, I'd appreciate it if you could point out exactly what I said is wrong. Thanks.)
I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.” Non-pecuniary externalities, in the Pigouvian sense, are really something you analyze to achieve efficiency. In this case, following a 5-year permitting process and plopping the industrial activity on industrial land is basically a form of bargaining and is probably acceptable from a social efficiency standpoint. Amazon’s hardly mining cobalt next to a daycare here.
> I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.”
But that's pretty much the definition of the term. It's a negative impact on a third party. If I'm living next to a data center, and it's noisy, or my electricity costs more, those are negative externalities.
There are real reasons not to want data centers next door, unlike 5G towers.
In the South Valley, the pre-data center nemesis were distribution hubs, lambasted for the traffic they caused. Ironically also a key component of Amazon’s physical infrastructure.
I'd say you're trying to define some ambiguous criteria to keep harms illegible to the analysis and thus deny that they exist. Noise pollution is very much pollution, certainly causes real problems, and falls right into the externality paradigm wherein a party unilaterally causes harm while making others suffer it.
That the effects of noise pollution are hard to formally describe (and extra hard to quantify in monetary terms) does not mean we can just throw up our hands and pretend they don't exist. In fact, I'd say this is exactly why we stake out lofty non-economic ideals like human rights etc - markets have friction (ie are not efficient), and this combined with your reasoning means we could justify anything that produces negative outcomes for humans by simply writing it off as non-economically-legible. But the entire human-value justification for letting markets do their thing rests on the positive benefits they bring to us humans, so that is absurd. And so we always need to look at the larger picture and judge the real-world effects on humans.
Bias Disclaimer: Amazon pays my salary currently, although my job doesn't have anything to do with datacenter construction.
Maybe I missed it, but the article doesn't seem to say what the "circumvention"/"loophole" that Amazon used was? It seems like Amazon went through the correct city permitting/legal processes years ago, and now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Like if Amazon followed the official process here, what's the problem? At some point you have to declare an approval final and allow a company to move forward with construction.
> ...the site had gone through a long approval process, which required public notices and public-comment periods. However, when Gilroy resident Rosa Rodriguez wanted to state her concern about the damage a data center can do to a region suffering from drought, she was told that the comment period had already lapsed in 2024
Is the "circumvention" the headline refers to that public commentary periods are time-boxed? But how could they not be time-boxed?
In fairness to the residents, the negative implications of data centers was probably not well known to them in 2024, but it seems to me that (at least based on the article) all the processes & rules were followed.
But if new evidence comes in which changes the basis for approval (e.g. lets say you need to do some earthworks and as part of performing them it becomes apparent these earthworks will damage nearby buildings), presumably the approval can be revoked until suitable changes can be made (or if that's not possible, the approval no longer holds)? The linked Wall Street Journal appears to give more details, suggesting this went through a fast-track process (with seemingly minimum community input). I'd argue fast-tracking projects is always a bad idea, as is trying to route around community consultation (given it's likely more expensive in the long run).
> I'd argue fast-tracking projects is always a bad idea, as is trying to route around community consultation
Building infrastructure and housing in the US is painfully slow and a huge tax on everyone, almost everything should be fast tracked. We have some of the most productive economic zones in the world (SF <-> LA, Boston <-> DC corridor) and we have made it largely illegal to build housing and transit in these areas due to bureaucracy and red tape.
Do you think the high speed rail between SF and LA needs more rounds of community input?
I think it's the zoning rules (based on https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...), which seem to provide an expedited process (which for large scale projects like this always seems a bit odd, and seems like it would increase the risk of corruption)?
Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
>Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
What "new information" arose aside from the general datacenter backlash that's been brewing this year?
It's possible that the official process is a bad one and needs reform. But that's really not Amazon's fault, and it would be super weird for them to set up a bunch of additional hoops for themselves to jump through. Also not very democratic.
> because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Or because they didn't notice until they saw actual construction.
How is that anyone else's problem? For decades (case literally in point) Americans have steadfastly walked away from their communities. Now they can't even notice new mega projects until the buildings are literally going up. Until they to sleep in the bed they made, they're not going to change
>because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
This ain’t the culture war. The public at large is fairly united on one side of this across the typical US political divides. If you want to dismiss this with a cute label to pretend that there aren’t any real concerns here, the only label that comes close to matching the actual dispute is class war.
Indeed. It is not clear to me why a community that is in opposition to something that will likely cause it to experience net negative economic impact are engaging in a "culture war".
The data center in question is being installed next to a Walmart supercenter and highway 101. It’s being built on land zoned for industrial use. It’s not next to anybody’s home.
This is false and easily provable by simply looking at the location on the map [1]. It's very clear that it's being built near housing and schooling. Especially a big deal as there's been more recent cases of exceedingly loud data centers carrying noise quite a distance.
The only houses I see are across a busy highway (101). The location is in an industrial park with nothing behind it. You’re not wrong, for large values of “near”, but not making a great case.
It's close enough when you consider that the noise from a poorly built data center (ie: most of the ones being stood up rapidly in the current AI craze) can carry noise upwards of a mile plus depending on a bunch of different factors. So a lot of homes in that area would potentially be within the blast radius of data center noise, especially at night.
If noise is the concern then regulate noise. Don’t restrict data centers.
If someone’s house has a dog that barks continuously, you aren’t going to say building houses here are restricted. Instead you restrict barking dogs, which is what cities do.
And how is that more or less likely then companies ignoring city zoning laws, or making cities grant zoning exceptions through kickbacks and corruption?
Much more likely! Zoning exceptions can be opposed and construction is very visible, as with this trend we're starting to see. Whereas once a structure is built the owner will stymie attempts at investigation by denying access, and generally has more resources than a municipality to waste endless time in court. If they're politically connected at the state/national level, they can even nullify existing pollution laws or override local ordinances.
It looks to me like it’s several hundreds of meters away from housing, with a 6-lane divided and controlled-access highway between the housing and the site.
You’re right that it does appear to be near a school (I don’t think anything that contradicts anything else I said). I think the health effects of siting a school right on a major highway are much more serious than being near a data center.
Before an edit, you had made an analogy to whether it makes sense to judge individuals' behavior the same way that datacenters are getting stereotyped. If there was no recourse through the legal system, then maybe?
The problem here is that the "justice" system is all too happy to come down on individuals, while giving corpos a pass. If you or I buy a loud car stereo, we can get fined for making too much noise. Cities can even pass new noise ordinances or new methods of measurement that are post facto of our purchase, and we still have to conform to them! But when a corpo does something similar, the kid gloves go on, their ongoing behavior (eg noise pollution) gets "grandfathered", and there is nothing that anybody can do. Restore the rule of law - meaning equal protection under it rather than one-sided laws written by corpos - to restore the public's trust that new data centers (and construction/business in general!) will be accountable.
But barring that, I'd say it's only smart to prevent this industry from getting a foothold in your community. Most are going to be great neighbors, but the few that aren't you can't do anything about. So why risk it?
That's because this article is the journalistic equivalent of a retweet. The article links to a WSJ[0] article (which is going to be paywalled for many people). Any time you get an article like this TH one, you should try to read the source article.
> There were no public meetings or votes before a lone city staffer gave Amazon.com the green light last July to build a 438,500-square-foot data center on 56 acres of farmland 30 miles south of San Jose.
> Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.
> Mayor Greg Bozzo said other big industrial projects have been approved in the same manner over the years, but didn’t cause any uproar.
> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy without their engagement, but now it bothers them that a data center is coming to Gilroy without them having the possibility of engagement,” Bozzo said.
On it's face this is an incredibly dim-witted comment by the mayor. The people are generally angry about Amazon building data centers, but they're particularly angry at their city council which has been working to conceal the project from exactly the people they have a duty to inform.
It's not about excoriation of Amazon. It's about regulatory capture. And saying Amazon "did nothing wrong" is just being blind to the problem.
Everything here seems fine. Providing everyone with a veto on all things is a surefire way to get nothing. Instead we have a system where we have a set of rules and someone who meets those rules objectively gets to make something. This is way better.
I’m glad they were able to build their datacenter.
Both? People are very easy to FUD up about any local development, and they rarely bear any costs of denying those development.
Being eager to uncritically lap up any FUD thrown your way is definitely a personal failing. Let alone spreading that FUD. But the fact that NIMBYs are allowed to wield an outsized power and do things like stall nuclear power for decades? That companies can engage in underhanded "find an activist group that wants to NIMBY in an area where the competitor is trying to build and then just fund it"? Failure of an incentive structure.
What should be the correct procedure if I want to build, let's say, a pig farm that'll be extremely smelly for miles? Whose agreement should I have to get, and whose shouldn't I have to get?
Silicon Valley tech should build mixed use high rise housing and datacenters right on their corporate campuses. All infrastructure to make this a reality is on them to provide. Zuck will be given a special exemption that allows him to build into the parts of that stinky salt marsh already approved for his semiabandoned shantytown.
Everyone should read "Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development" by David Harvey. Written 25 years ago, it accurately predicts the data center trend - geography usurped by capatalistic growth.
the police and entire justice system are on the side of capital. The peoples history of the united States by Howard Zinn covers many attempts Luke this. he makes a case for what works and what doesn't. its a large book, but you can find good summaries online.
Using the book as a guide, the DCs get built, the public pays for it in ways more than initially estimated, profits flow to private capital owners, and then there's a poltical fight over taxes, electricity, and land.
So when it comes down to choice and where to park the money: The votes of humans matter less than the power of AI agents.
Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
But of course, the advantages are obvious to them:
1) 24/7 intelligence when you need it.
2) Tokens can be generated cheaply, meaning lots of work for 1 / 100th of the price of a human.
3) Knowledge can stay with the agent and will never leave the company and the agent has no breaks or weekends.
No wonder Amazon saw something like this, wanted it so badly and ignored humans to build more homes for c̶l̶a̶n̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ AI agents. Such a sad state of affairs.
This headline seems misleading at best. There was, as far as I can tell reading both this piece and the original reporting in the WSJ[0], no community vote for or against data center construction. What appears to have happened is that Amazon simply followed the existing permitting rules for other industrial construction, “Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.”[0] The existing zoning laws did not require a public vote to receive a permit, so I don’t understand in what way a public vote was “circumvented”. It’s certainly fair for residents to ask for more input in general on permitting or zoning, and even to place explicit restriction on data centers going forward, but it seems like what people want is an ex post facto law, which is nigh universally bad law.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and waiting to read an example. This might just be the first I’ve read.
> “…by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago”
I live on Long Island NY. Here on LI and Upstate there are a surprising number of former industrial land and abandoned buildings. It’s the whole package—loss of jobs, years of post-industrial decline, lost revenue and old rules on the books. Ripe for a new industry which, like remote workers, doesn’t need to be located next to the larger communities where their work product is consumed. Gentrification or redevelopment of agricultural land into boiling data centers are the outcomes.
> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy …” Bozzo said.
It’s a dirty fight. All sides.
Amazon wants to build on cheap land, and not on parcels the cities want cleaned up.
I’m wondering why these data centers are such a nuisance. We’ve had data centers for years. Is it just the fast growth and number? And is there good public data on their sustainability regarding water and electricity and environmental impact? If cities have failed, it’s turning a blind eye from collecting this data.
> I’m wondering why these data centers are such a nuisance. We’ve had data centers for years. Is it just the fast growth and number?
That's likely a big part of it.
AI data centers need an order of magnitude or more power than a cloud data center, and a lot more are being built.
Before with the lower power requirements and with slow and steady growth a data center project was handled by the utilities just like they handled a new factory or a new large shopping mall. The utility might need to add substation of some local transmission lines but it wasn't a big deal.
An AI data center uses so much more power that even if the utility has enough capacity overall to cover it, the AI data center needs that all at one site meaning quit a bit more new infrastructure needs to be built.
Now add in the number being built. The utility now is much less likely to have generation capacity to cover them, meaning the utility will have to buy electricity on the open market which is more expensive.
Another factor is that many AI data centers cannot wait for that and so find sources of energy other than the grid to tide them over for the several years it might take before the grid is ready for them. These sources are often not good for their neighbors.
Why people oppose datacenters:
Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society.
Resource utilization: power and water.
Pollution: natural gas turbines on site and broadly the pollution of power generation, and noise pollution.
Subsidies to multitrillion dollar companies at the expense of taxpayers.
Impact on local community: traffic, construction, impact to surrounding home prices.
Lies about the benefits of datacenters: talk of how much money it might bring governments, while no dividends are paid to citizens impacted by the negative effects above.
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If a datacenter was quiet, powered by renewables, water-efficient in a place without water supply insecurity, and funded by the builders instead of taxpayers, most complaints would be solved.
These operators are in such a rush to build that they are ignoring all decency and resident concern in many cases.
> Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society.
I think this is the real reason, while the others don't make that much sense when we really think about it.
Large datacenters are normally limited to industrial zoned land, so they're "competing" for space with other industrial projects, and their externalities are typically mild compared to other industrial projects.
Most datacenters create little traffic, minimal pollution, and no bad odors. They do use substantial power and water, but they pay for it (though in certain cases the economics aren't perfect).
I'd much rather live near a datacenter than a dump, sewage facility, refinery, etc. etc.
>Subsidies to multitrillion dollar companies at the expense of taxpayers.
How does this square with the fact that one county in Virginia derives half of its budget from datacenters?
Half of a dollar is fifty-cents. A lot of work is necessary to put that figure into the framing of the benefits of data centers for communities.
"subsidies" implies the number is negative. Now it sounds like you're moving the goalposts from "datacenters are getting subsidized" to something vague like "they're not paying enough".
Two things can be true: the construction can be technically legal and at clear odds with community opinion.
I mean, yes. Amazon can likely do this. But is this strategy really in keeping with its long term interests? I mean, look at the comments in the rest of this very topic. Do you want a communist insurrection? This is literally how you get communist insurrections. People are fucking pissed, and the bourge^M^M^M^M funding-focused growth-minded startup set here are throwing gasoline on the fire.
6 years ago when the work to build the data center started, nobody cared about data centers.
Should 6 years of planning be thrown away because data centers have recently become fashionable to hate?
So noise and pollution that makes it impossible to live in or sell your house is now simply 'fashionable' to hate?
I guess i don't understand why reneging on a binding agreement is the cool thing here. They went through all the requirements. If the requirements should now change that's fine. But hold yourself to the agreement you made. Or appropriately terminate it
Yep.
The "noise and pollution" of a datacenter are bordering on nonexistent. The same goes for water use concerns and more. The environmental concerns are extremely overblown - but NIMBYs really don't need much to get going.
So which data center do you call neighbor?
This is going to sound like I'm flipping sides in this thread: but yeah, absolutely. Otherwise people in Gilroy would have hated datacenters when the planning started and Amazon would have built in Fresno or wherever.
Really both sides are insane in this battle. People are angry about social change, injustice, perceived loss of status and are taking out those frustrations on totems like "Buildings Owned by Big Tech". Which is wrong. But it's equally wrong to ignore those concerns and try to align with their political enemies, which only makes this worse. (We saw exactly this thing happen with the vaccine madness just half a decade ago!)
To wit: we're all going to hell in a handbasket and this community is 100% as much at fault as the big data opposition front.
6 years of planning can be thrown away if the community is just now becoming aware of the potential impact.
It’s not on the community to adhere to the companies looking to make a profit while ignoring how their presence affects those around them. Quite the opposite really.
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"Nobody intelligent opposes dovecote construction"*
*French nobility circa 1789
Your premise is a straw man so maybe keep your opinion on the intelligence of others to yourself.
Plenty of journalists are eating well reporting on the negative externalities actively felt by residents who live near data centers. It is not hard to find if you look.
5G towers have no negative externalities except looking kinda dorky. In fact, they're nice; they improve your reception. The same cannot be said for data centers.
(Instead of just downvoting this, I'd appreciate it if you could point out exactly what I said is wrong. Thanks.)
5G towers are typically much smaller and less conspicuous than the towers they are replacing. One of 5G's hallmarks is its "small cell" architecture.
I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.” Non-pecuniary externalities, in the Pigouvian sense, are really something you analyze to achieve efficiency. In this case, following a 5-year permitting process and plopping the industrial activity on industrial land is basically a form of bargaining and is probably acceptable from a social efficiency standpoint. Amazon’s hardly mining cobalt next to a daycare here.
> I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.”
But that's pretty much the definition of the term. It's a negative impact on a third party. If I'm living next to a data center, and it's noisy, or my electricity costs more, those are negative externalities.
There are real reasons not to want data centers next door, unlike 5G towers.
In the South Valley, the pre-data center nemesis were distribution hubs, lambasted for the traffic they caused. Ironically also a key component of Amazon’s physical infrastructure.
I'd say you're trying to define some ambiguous criteria to keep harms illegible to the analysis and thus deny that they exist. Noise pollution is very much pollution, certainly causes real problems, and falls right into the externality paradigm wherein a party unilaterally causes harm while making others suffer it.
That the effects of noise pollution are hard to formally describe (and extra hard to quantify in monetary terms) does not mean we can just throw up our hands and pretend they don't exist. In fact, I'd say this is exactly why we stake out lofty non-economic ideals like human rights etc - markets have friction (ie are not efficient), and this combined with your reasoning means we could justify anything that produces negative outcomes for humans by simply writing it off as non-economically-legible. But the entire human-value justification for letting markets do their thing rests on the positive benefits they bring to us humans, so that is absurd. And so we always need to look at the larger picture and judge the real-world effects on humans.
Bias Disclaimer: Amazon pays my salary currently, although my job doesn't have anything to do with datacenter construction.
Maybe I missed it, but the article doesn't seem to say what the "circumvention"/"loophole" that Amazon used was? It seems like Amazon went through the correct city permitting/legal processes years ago, and now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Like if Amazon followed the official process here, what's the problem? At some point you have to declare an approval final and allow a company to move forward with construction.
That was my read as well:
> ...the site had gone through a long approval process, which required public notices and public-comment periods. However, when Gilroy resident Rosa Rodriguez wanted to state her concern about the damage a data center can do to a region suffering from drought, she was told that the comment period had already lapsed in 2024
Is the "circumvention" the headline refers to that public commentary periods are time-boxed? But how could they not be time-boxed?
In fairness to the residents, the negative implications of data centers was probably not well known to them in 2024, but it seems to me that (at least based on the article) all the processes & rules were followed.
But if new evidence comes in which changes the basis for approval (e.g. lets say you need to do some earthworks and as part of performing them it becomes apparent these earthworks will damage nearby buildings), presumably the approval can be revoked until suitable changes can be made (or if that's not possible, the approval no longer holds)? The linked Wall Street Journal appears to give more details, suggesting this went through a fast-track process (with seemingly minimum community input). I'd argue fast-tracking projects is always a bad idea, as is trying to route around community consultation (given it's likely more expensive in the long run).
> I'd argue fast-tracking projects is always a bad idea, as is trying to route around community consultation
Building infrastructure and housing in the US is painfully slow and a huge tax on everyone, almost everything should be fast tracked. We have some of the most productive economic zones in the world (SF <-> LA, Boston <-> DC corridor) and we have made it largely illegal to build housing and transit in these areas due to bureaucracy and red tape.
Do you think the high speed rail between SF and LA needs more rounds of community input?
I would take fast-tracking high speed rail over community consultation.
I think it's the zoning rules (based on https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...), which seem to provide an expedited process (which for large scale projects like this always seems a bit odd, and seems like it would increase the risk of corruption)?
Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
>Arguably if new information arrives which changes the risks or impacts of a project, especially if the project was initially on some kind of fast-track process, then projects should be subject to re-reviewed and scrutiny (which I would expect to have a standard legal process).
What "new information" arose aside from the general datacenter backlash that's been brewing this year?
There’s no such thing as a “final” contract. Everything is open to relitigation. I mean look at the E Jean Carol and President Trump case.
It's possible that the official process is a bad one and needs reform. But that's really not Amazon's fault, and it would be super weird for them to set up a bunch of additional hoops for themselves to jump through. Also not very democratic.
> because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
Or because they didn't notice until they saw actual construction.
How is that anyone else's problem? For decades (case literally in point) Americans have steadfastly walked away from their communities. Now they can't even notice new mega projects until the buildings are literally going up. Until they to sleep in the bed they made, they're not going to change
>because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic?
This ain’t the culture war. The public at large is fairly united on one side of this across the typical US political divides. If you want to dismiss this with a cute label to pretend that there aren’t any real concerns here, the only label that comes close to matching the actual dispute is class war.
Indeed. It is not clear to me why a community that is in opposition to something that will likely cause it to experience net negative economic impact are engaging in a "culture war".
If this can be reduced to a culture war, all of politics is a culture war, making the term meaningless.
> now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic
I hope one day Amazon or any AI company installs a data center next to your home. Then you will finally understand
The data center in question is being installed next to a Walmart supercenter and highway 101. It’s being built on land zoned for industrial use. It’s not next to anybody’s home.
This is false and easily provable by simply looking at the location on the map [1]. It's very clear that it's being built near housing and schooling. Especially a big deal as there's been more recent cases of exceedingly loud data centers carrying noise quite a distance.
[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/D5PDUa62B5weCcqZ7
The only houses I see are across a busy highway (101). The location is in an industrial park with nothing behind it. You’re not wrong, for large values of “near”, but not making a great case.
It's close enough when you consider that the noise from a poorly built data center (ie: most of the ones being stood up rapidly in the current AI craze) can carry noise upwards of a mile plus depending on a bunch of different factors. So a lot of homes in that area would potentially be within the blast radius of data center noise, especially at night.
If noise is the concern then regulate noise. Don’t restrict data centers.
If someone’s house has a dog that barks continuously, you aren’t going to say building houses here are restricted. Instead you restrict barking dogs, which is what cities do.
And companies frequently ignore city-wide noise ordinance thanks to corruption and kickbacks.
And how is that more or less likely then companies ignoring city zoning laws, or making cities grant zoning exceptions through kickbacks and corruption?
Much more likely! Zoning exceptions can be opposed and construction is very visible, as with this trend we're starting to see. Whereas once a structure is built the owner will stymie attempts at investigation by denying access, and generally has more resources than a municipality to waste endless time in court. If they're politically connected at the state/national level, they can even nullify existing pollution laws or override local ordinances.
It looks to me like it’s several hundreds of meters away from housing, with a 6-lane divided and controlled-access highway between the housing and the site.
You’re right that it does appear to be near a school (I don’t think anything that contradicts anything else I said). I think the health effects of siting a school right on a major highway are much more serious than being near a data center.
So you saw a video of the unholy shrieking of a gas turbine and concluded that all data centers are like that?
Before an edit, you had made an analogy to whether it makes sense to judge individuals' behavior the same way that datacenters are getting stereotyped. If there was no recourse through the legal system, then maybe?
The problem here is that the "justice" system is all too happy to come down on individuals, while giving corpos a pass. If you or I buy a loud car stereo, we can get fined for making too much noise. Cities can even pass new noise ordinances or new methods of measurement that are post facto of our purchase, and we still have to conform to them! But when a corpo does something similar, the kid gloves go on, their ongoing behavior (eg noise pollution) gets "grandfathered", and there is nothing that anybody can do. Restore the rule of law - meaning equal protection under it rather than one-sided laws written by corpos - to restore the public's trust that new data centers (and construction/business in general!) will be accountable.
But barring that, I'd say it's only smart to prevent this industry from getting a foothold in your community. Most are going to be great neighbors, but the few that aren't you can't do anything about. So why risk it?
That's because this article is the journalistic equivalent of a retweet. The article links to a WSJ[0] article (which is going to be paywalled for many people). Any time you get an article like this TH one, you should try to read the source article.
> There were no public meetings or votes before a lone city staffer gave Amazon.com the green light last July to build a 438,500-square-foot data center on 56 acres of farmland 30 miles south of San Jose.
> Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.
> Mayor Greg Bozzo said other big industrial projects have been approved in the same manner over the years, but didn’t cause any uproar.
> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy without their engagement, but now it bothers them that a data center is coming to Gilroy without them having the possibility of engagement,” Bozzo said.
On it's face this is an incredibly dim-witted comment by the mayor. The people are generally angry about Amazon building data centers, but they're particularly angry at their city council which has been working to conceal the project from exactly the people they have a duty to inform.
It's not about excoriation of Amazon. It's about regulatory capture. And saying Amazon "did nothing wrong" is just being blind to the problem.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...
Everything here seems fine. Providing everyone with a veto on all things is a surefire way to get nothing. Instead we have a system where we have a set of rules and someone who meets those rules objectively gets to make something. This is way better.
I’m glad they were able to build their datacenter.
If you give NIMBYs as much as an inch of decision-making power, they'll find a way of making you regret it.
For all the talk of "negative externalities", they sure aren't shy about imposing them on others.
Is a NIMBY a type of person or is it an incentive structure?
Both? People are very easy to FUD up about any local development, and they rarely bear any costs of denying those development.
Being eager to uncritically lap up any FUD thrown your way is definitely a personal failing. Let alone spreading that FUD. But the fact that NIMBYs are allowed to wield an outsized power and do things like stall nuclear power for decades? That companies can engage in underhanded "find an activist group that wants to NIMBY in an area where the competitor is trying to build and then just fund it"? Failure of an incentive structure.
What should be the correct procedure if I want to build, let's say, a pig farm that'll be extremely smelly for miles? Whose agreement should I have to get, and whose shouldn't I have to get?
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A modest proposal, based on this article:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3026312/what-silicon-valley-woul...
Silicon Valley tech should build mixed use high rise housing and datacenters right on their corporate campuses. All infrastructure to make this a reality is on them to provide. Zuck will be given a special exemption that allows him to build into the parts of that stinky salt marsh already approved for his semiabandoned shantytown.
Everyone should read "Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development" by David Harvey. Written 25 years ago, it accurately predicts the data center trend - geography usurped by capatalistic growth.
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the police and entire justice system are on the side of capital. The peoples history of the united States by Howard Zinn covers many attempts Luke this. he makes a case for what works and what doesn't. its a large book, but you can find good summaries online.
Using the book as a guide, the DCs get built, the public pays for it in ways more than initially estimated, profits flow to private capital owners, and then there's a poltical fight over taxes, electricity, and land.
So when it comes down to choice and where to park the money: The votes of humans matter less than the power of AI agents.
Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
But of course, the advantages are obvious to them:
1) 24/7 intelligence when you need it.
2) Tokens can be generated cheaply, meaning lots of work for 1 / 100th of the price of a human.
3) Knowledge can stay with the agent and will never leave the company and the agent has no breaks or weekends.
No wonder Amazon saw something like this, wanted it so badly and ignored humans to build more homes for c̶l̶a̶n̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ AI agents. Such a sad state of affairs.
> Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.
I can only imagine the level of outrage that would instantly ensue if Amazon announced they were getting into the home-building business.