Glossy brochures promise jobs, tax windfalls, and "quiet, clean" server farms. What communities actually get: soaring power bills, drained aquifers, a constant industrial hum — and a few dozen permanent jobs behind a fence. We're done being a line item in someone else's growth projection.
When a hyperscale campus lands on the grid, transmission lines, substations, and new generation don't pay for themselves. Utilities spread those costs across every household. Regulators in multiple states are now investigating whether ordinary ratepayers are subsidizing the world's richest companies' electricity.
Evaporative cooling consumes water — it doesn't borrow it. Large campuses can draw millions of gallons a day, often in regions already stressed. "Zero-water" designs exist, but they trade water for even more electricity. Either way, the community absorbs the strain.
A low-frequency drone from cooling fans and transformers, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. "Meets the industrial sound ordinance" is not the same as "you'll never hear it." Residents near existing facilities describe a sound you can't unhear — in bedrooms, at midnight, forever.
"An industry that writes its own fact sheets should expect neighbors who write their own. We did the reading. We're not confused. We object."
— Communities Over Compute Coalition
Anti-nuclear campaigners refused nuclear-generated power where they could. Anti-fur activists emptied their closets before they marched. Movements earn credibility when members accept personal cost. If you believe data centers should be banned, we invite you to go on the record and relinquish what they provide — streaming, cloud storage, AI assistants, and the rest. It's the hardest page on this site. That's the point.
Economic-impact studies are commissioned by developers. The strain on water, power, land, and quality of life is experienced by neighbors. Here is the ledger from the community's side of the fence.
Data center electricity use is projected to multiply severalfold within a decade. New gas plants are being built and coal retirements delayed to serve it — reversing local clean-air progress while your utility asks for rate increases.
The "$7M in new annual tax revenue" headline rarely mentions the incentive package: decades-long exemptions on equipment — the most valuable thing in the building. Some towns discover the school district's windfall was mostly waived before the ribbon was cut.
Yes, construction brings a thousand trade jobs — for 18 to 30 months, largely from traveling crews. The permanent workforce for a hyperscale building is typically measured in dozens. Compare that headcount to the acreage, water, and megawatts consumed.
Every campus keeps banks of diesel generators for backup — permitted to run for "testing and emergencies." Each test is exhaust in local air. Communities have found permit applications requesting hundreds of hours of allowable runtime per generator, per year.
Rezoning agricultural land to industrial is a one-way door. Once graded, fenced, and paved, that land never grows anything again. A windowless gray box the length of several football fields becomes the permanent view — and the permanent neighbor.
Developers cite studies showing "no measurable impact." Ask a simpler question: given two identical houses, one beside a humming industrial campus with diesel backup and 24/7 lighting, which do you bid on? Buyers answer this every day. Honestly.
Projects routinely arrive under code names, with officials signing non-disclosure agreements before the public hears a word. When the deal is announced, key terms are settled. Whatever you think of data centers, that process should offend you.
Industry advocacy sites list community concerns as "myths," then "debunk" them with best-case scenarios and unenforceable promises. Below: the polished claim, and what neighbors of existing facilities would tell you.
Modern closed-loop designs are presented as if they were the default, making water concerns sound outdated.
"Can use zero-water cooling" is not "will." Air-cooled designs draw substantially more electricity, so the burden shifts to the grid — and to your bill. Demand the actual permitted daily withdrawal in writing, with penalties. If they won't commit on paper, the brochure was marketing.
Compliance with the township industrial ordinance is offered as proof there is no problem.
The comparison hides what matters: duration and character. A continuous low-frequency tonal hum at 2 AM is experienced completely differently from a brief daytime noise at the same decibel reading. Ordinances written for factories with shifts were never designed for a machine that never stops.
Construction and operations numbers are blended into a single impressive-sounding jobs story.
Construction is temporary and often staffed by regional traveling crews. The permanent number — the one your town lives with for 30 years — is typically a few dozen. Per acre and per megawatt, data centers are among the least job-dense industrial uses a town can approve.
Gross revenue figures are quoted; the incentive package that reduces them is not.
Many states exempt server equipment — most of the facility's value — from tax for decades. Ask for the projected revenue after every abatement, exemption, and incentive, year by year, signed. Towns that skipped this step are now reading about their own giveaways in the newspaper.
Grid strain is reframed as a gift: developer-funded infrastructure "benefiting everyone."
Interconnection fees don't cover new generation, regional transmission, or reserve capacity. Utility commissions across the country are opening proceedings on exactly this cost-shift. If the upgrades truly benefit everyone, why are residential rates rising fastest in data center corridors?
European pilot projects are cited as though they were standard practice for US builds.
Heat reuse is real — in a handful of showcase projects, mostly abroad, where district heating already exists. For the typical American greenfield build, the heat goes into the air, and the diesel backup fleet goes into the permit. Judge the project in front of you, not the one in the press release.
We hold the industry to a simple rule: put commitments in writing, on the record, with consequences. So we hold ourselves to the same one. If we believe these facilities shouldn't exist here — or anywhere — we should be willing to live without what they produce. That's why this coalition asks every member to take the Digital Divestment Pledge. Conviction that costs nothing convinces no one.
Every service below runs on the buildings we oppose. If they should be banned, we should be prepared to give them up. Check what you're willing to relinquish, see where your conviction really stands, and sign your name to it.
Principled refusal has a long history: activists who accepted personal inconvenience made their opposition impossible to dismiss as someone else's problem. This pledge stands in that tradition — and it's also an honesty check. If the list below is unthinkable to give up, that's worth sitting with before the next town hall.
Households and whole co-ops opted out of nuclear-sourced electricity, paid premiums for alternatives, and lived their objection on their monthly bill.
Activists didn't just protest fur — they emptied their own closets first, accepting personal loss before asking anyone else to change.
From grapes to gasoline, effective boycotts have always started with members giving up something they actually used — not something they never wanted.
I believe data centers impose costs on communities that outweigh their benefits, and I believe they should not be built here. Because I hold this position, I commit — publicly, and at personal cost — to relinquish the following services that depend on the facilities I oppose:
Including the uncomfortable ones people ask us.
Yard signs feel good. These change outcomes.
Sign the Digital Divestment Pledge and bring your printed card to the next public hearing. A room full of residents who have accepted personal cost is impossible to dismiss as NIMBYs who "just want the benefits without the buildings."
Public records laws are your friend: request the incentive agreements, NDAs signed by officials, water permit applications, and utility interconnection studies. Deals negotiated in the dark rarely survive daylight unchanged.
Rezonings are won at planning commission work sessions nobody attends, months before the dramatic final vote. Get the meeting calendar, divide the dates among neighbors, and never let a session pass without a resident on the record.
Push your council to require binding development agreements: water caps, sound monitoring with automatic penalties, net tax disclosures, decommissioning bonds. If the developer's promises are real, they'll sign. If they won't sign, you've learned everything.
Developers negotiate with towns one at a time on purpose. Coalitions that share documents, experts, and testimony across jurisdictions flip the leverage. Your strongest evidence is a neighbor from the last town that said yes.
Conviction that costs nothing convinces no one. Start with the one move that's entirely in your hands.