Data center developers want to make it hard to track them: elected official

A Texas county commissioner expressed skepticism about a data center project that came to his county a year ago, noting that the company behind the proposal - Amazon Web Services - did not provide detailed plans or specifics. The Pew Research Center reports that 67% of planned data centers are in rural areas, like Hood County in Texas, where five elected officials are currently voting on data center proposals.

One of these officials, Dave Eagle, believes that the tech companies view rural areas like his as "country bumpkins" and make grand promises of job creation and community upgrades without revealing the full extent of their plans. Amazon Web Services, the company behind the Hood County proposal, attempted to secure a 90% property tax rebate for 30 years, but the commissioner voted against the project.

However, the same project is moving forward in the next county over, where Amazon reportedly received the tax rebate it sought. As AI technology advances, the demand for data centers has surged, with over 3,000 data centers already operating in the U.S. and an additional 1,500 proposed. These facilities are becoming significantly larger, with AI data centers consuming vast amounts of electricity.

Experts predict that the tech industry will invest around $1.5 trillion in building data centers by next year. While some argue that data centers will provide the computing power needed for artificial general intelligence, others express concerns over potential health risks related to water, air, and noise pollution. In Texas, some politicians have become proponents of the tech industry, with Governor Greg Abbott welcoming a $40 billion investment from Google and now pausing approval of new data centers until they complete an audit of the state's power grid.