Data centers are being built across the country at a pace few communities have seen before. They are often described as clean, modern facilities that bring jobs and investment. Some do bring benefits. But these are large techno industrial sites, and they affect a community’s water, electric bills, air, land, and quality of life in ways that are not always explained up front.

Communities have a right to understand what is being proposed before they approve it. What the facility is, who will operate it, what it will use, and who it will serve? How does this impact our future economic growth? Those are reasonable questions to ask of any major project, from a mall, prison, power plant to a pipeline.

Be informed and be ready to protect your community from the economic, environmental, and social harms of data centers.

Who benefits and who pays?

Before weighing any of the many impacts, start with the question communities ask about any large project: what is this, and who is it for?

Data centers are built for profits in a national and global computing market and not for the towns they sit in. Often the customer, or “tenant,” is never named publicly, and the operator is a holding company whose owner isn’t disclosed. The permanent jobs left after construction are usually few. The water, pollution, power, and land it uses, however, are local and lasting. So a handful of plain questions are worth answering before a project is approved:

• Who will own and operate it, and who is the tenant?
• What will it actually be used for? What are the outputs for this community?
• How many permanent local jobs will it create?
• What does the community get in return for the water, power, and land it uses?
• Can those promises be enforced if they aren’t kept?

The sections below lay out the AI and data center impacts in detail. Keep all these questions in mind as you read. They are what decide whether a project is a good deal for your community.

This page is a starting point. Each section below explains one type of impact in plain terms, with the facts and sources behind it, so you can decide for yourself what it means for your community.