Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal

bombcar

I hesitate to say it, but at least the datacenter companies haven't realized that federal railroad laws mean that the feds can preempt state and local governments with regards to railroads and yards ... though it may be hard to argue that a datacenter is a necessary part of a railroad.

functionmouse

Do what you must, they've already won.

cucumber3732842

I wish when they write these storied they'd put the town's per capita income in brackets the way they do with politician's party affiliation or company's ticker. The "Fairfax of St. Louis" voting out half their legislature over a project means something very different than the "Newark of St. Louis" doing the same.

chromacity

I'm honestly surprised why local governments are so eager to make datacenter deals in the first place. I'm pro-progress, but a datacenter brings approximately nothing to the local economy. It doesn't employ any noteworthy number of people, it doesn't generate any real tax revenue, and it increases electricity costs for the region. So if the voters don't want it, that feels like their prerogative. I don't know if it's the elected officials conflating data centers with the region becoming a bustling tech hub, rather than just a way for a Bay Area company to capitalize on cheap electricity... or if it's kickbacks.

ramesh31

This is becoming a pretty clear wedge between red and blue. Why do you think Musk opened his diesel turbine driven data center in rural Mississippi? Big Tech is systematically targeting small municipalities across the US with promises of insane money to anyone willing to sell out their residents. Missouri being traditionally purple, it makes a lot of sense the flashpoint would be here.

fusslo

> Missouri campaign finance records show a political action committee — made up of labor unions that support data centers because of the jobs they create — spent almost $40,000 in the final weeks of the race on newspaper and digital ads and yard signs in support of the four council members booted from office. Serious question, what jobs do datacenters create? Are there jobs for local residents?

schainks

Plugging this video about infrasound, which I only recently learned was a thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo These datacenters can be built in ways to limit this kind of noise pollution, but it appears local leaders do not think about things like this that can truly harm their constituents.

josefritzishere

Generally this is good. Representatives should represent their populace and not monied interests. When they fail to do so they shoudl be removed. That's when democracy is operating correctly. But the article still contained the falsehood that data centers create jobs. This is just not accurate. Most data centers are acres of racks and HVAC with precious few humans to maintain them.

uberduper

I don't know anything about this particular site, but I presume it's one of the new mega gpu sites. I'm seeing many people in the comments with an early 2000's era concept of datacenters. The scale of these new sites is mind boggling. Take your idea of a typical datacenter building. Make it 4x bigger. Then put 4 of them together into a cluster. Then imagine 10 of those clusters at the site.

sleepybrett

The coucilmembers probably got their bag already from whoever is building that datacenter, voting them out after the fact just means they don't have to clock in.

sleepybrett

It will be interesting to see what we do with these enormous concrete boxes once we find a better way to do whatever we think all this 'ai' is going to do. 'Dead malls' that are being partially converted into pickleball courts and places for people to take their daily 'constitutional' indoors are going to seem quaint. That is if the bubble doesn't pop because of other factors first that is...

someguydave

It’s a bit crazy that the elderly are blocking data center buildouts while they also expect to collect a big chunk of everyone’s payroll. Pick your lane.