The GenAI boom has sparked a surge in the number of data centers in the United States. Although these installations were already scattered, most were in sparsely populated areas like the open plains of Virginia. As tech companies continue to pursue readily available land and more affordable utility costs, these data centers have begun to encroach on smaller, rural communities, and residents in these communities are worried.
A data center serves a variety of digital and AI purposes and requires several types of resources, including physical space to house servers and components, electricity to power everything, and water to keep everything cool. Compared to land closer to large metropolitan areas, which is shrinking and becoming more expensive, rural areas tend to have a surplus of resources a data center needs at attractive prices. It is precisely for this reason that people in rural areas are increasingly concerned about the development of new data centers that take up space, harm the environment and increase the general cost of living in the region.
Land and resources are cheaper in rural areas
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While mini data centers can fit in your backyard, most standalone AI data centers are on massive, sprawling complexes. In addition to the abundance of servers, this size is necessary to accommodate other components needed for generative AI to work, like GPUs, as well as all the electricity to run and water to keep the computers from overheating. This need for such plots of land has led tech companies and developers to look to less populated areas of states where land is cheaper.
Most prime locations for data centers have already been occupied or are so expensive that no one can claim them. However, in the digital age, you don’t have to be right next to a shopping center to serve it. Developers realized that it was possible to build a data center anywhere in the country as long as there was a stable internet connection, sufficient power capacity and water available. They therefore claimed rural communities where these resources are still available and affordable.
The presence of a data center increases costs
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As expected, these rural communities haven’t really been shy about inviting data centers into their neighborhoods. Prior to data center development, vital resources such as electricity and water are cheap and abundant, but data centers can consume enormous amounts of energy, as well as evaporate or pollute large amounts of water used for cooling, limiting residents’ access to these resources and significantly increasing their costs. Amazon’s data centers alone consumed more than 2.5 billion gallons of water in one year.
In addition to resource issues, the presence of data centers poses more concrete problems. On the one hand, rezoning rural areas for data centers may mean sacrificing viable agricultural land, which could have a knock-on effect on crop size and cost. Additionally, because data centers rely heavily on diesel generators for power, their presence can lead to both a decrease in local air quality and an increase in unpleasant noise pollution. As well as being problematic in the short term, concerns have been raised about the potential impact of all of these issues in the long term, both on human and local animal populations, for which there is currently little or no hard data.
