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A comment on Data centers need power – lower income, rural residents pay the price. Parent comment

Re:Data centers need power – lower income, rural residents p... by austin-cheney on Thursday November 12, 2026 @04:21PM (#50474463)
This has been repeatedly debunked. Data centers provide temporary construction jobs, but those jobs are rarely local unless built in a major metropolitan area. Otherwise the data centers are almost completely automated. The Facebook data center near where I live is absolutely massive and employs about 150 people.
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Re:Data centers need power – lower income, rural residents p... by MaxHoppersGhost on Thursday November 12, 2026 @04:33PM (#50474615)
150 employees in a community of a few thousand or even 20 thousand is a massive boost to the local economy. Some places these things are being built have had declining populations for decades and haven't been new jobs in as many years as well.
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Re:Data centers need power – lower income, rural residents p... by austin-cheney on Thursday November 12, 2026 @06:38PM (#50476011)
That is numerically irrational. If a data center consumes enough water and power for a community of 20,000 what do those local residents get in return?

This is numerically simple. How much money do these data centers return to the local community and how much do they cost the local community. It’s a catastrophic net-negative for all parties except the owner and the construction crew.

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Re:Data centers need power – lower income, rural residents p... by MaxHoppersGhost on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:55PM (#50478517)
>If a data center consumes enough water and power for a community of 20,000 what do those local residents get in return?

Source? We live in America and, except for some areas like the southwest, there are reservoirs everywhere with loads of water.

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Re:Data centers need power – lower income, rural residents p... by austin-cheney on Friday November 13, 2026 @03:31AM (#50480175)
Where in the US is there unlimited fresh water for municipal consumption? Does data center construction include the expenses of building out additional reservoirs?
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