"Data" centers
For many people, the scariest part of this issue aren’t the data centers themselves. The scariest part is the growing suspicion that these decisions were made years before anyone even heard about the project. At first, most people view these developments as a natural byproduct of the AI boom. A company needs more computing power, finds a piece of land, builds a facility, and moves on. It makes sense. But the deeper you look, the harder that explanation is to accept. The same pattern keeps appearing across the country: rural farmland, small towns, communities with limited zoning protections, and areas already facing pressure on their water supplies. And wherever these projects appear, enormous supporting infrastructure seems to arrive right alongside them. New transmission corridors. Massive substations. Utility expansions that look far larger than what many residents expect a single facility would require. For Tammy Clark, that raises a different question entire...
