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I recently did a presentation at the Dover Public Library about the environmental issues associated with data centers. These issues include: noise, water usage, hundreds of acres of land transformed into industrial developments, exposure to air pollution from power generation, light pollution from the facilities, high voltage transmission lines cutting through communities and farmlands, probable increases in utility bills due to the increases in power consumption, surface water contamination from plant cooling systems, and high-volume gas pipelines for onsite megawatt power generation.
We have been told by countless politicians that we "need these to compete with China.” Yet, if you look at the current numbers of data centers by country, as of May 2026 "the United States dominates the market with 5,427 data centers for a population of 349,035,494. This is 46 percent of the global total." China has 449 data centers with a population of 1,412,792,821. My question for the big tech CEOs is why do we need so many data centers and who is financing all of them? Is it greed, not need, driving the ridiculous amounts of hyperscale centers being built around the country?
Is has become obvious to most citizens in the USA that these hyperscale centers are resource hogs. Especially disturbing is the large amount of water used primarily for equipment cooling, however large quantities of water are also required for energy production. Most data centers in the USA use methane gas and rely on on-site gas power plants or gas-powered fuel cells.
The members of Save Ohio Parks have pointed to the explosion of construction for new data centers as a possible reason our state lands (including Salt Fork State Park, Egypt Valley Wildlife Area, and Jockey Hollow) have been nominated by fossil fuel companies to be leased for fracking. I was at the recent Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission give-a-way and watched as Commission Chair Theresa White and the other members handed over 15,000 more acres of Ohioans' public lands to out-of-state oil and gas companies.
Additionally, "companies are proposing or building 10 new natural gas power plants, mostly in southern Ohio. If all 10 operate at full capacity, they could emit 75 million tons of greenhouse gases per year, according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project.
Another major issue with hyperscale data centers is water consumption. A single data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day, and operate 24/7 365 days a year (usage equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people). Note that the years of 2024 and 2025 saw record droughts in Ohio and West Virginia.
Water cooling systems also require chemicals like nitrates, disinfectants, azoles, and other compounds, which are discharged into the environment. Even in a closed loop system, these compounds are discharged into the environment during what is known as a "blowdown.” A blowdown is used to clean the system of unwanted buildup of suspended solids and chemicals. When a blowdown discharge finally leaves the site via a body of water, it can carry nitrates, glycols, and heavy metals at thousands of times the limits set for surface waters. Both Lake Erie and the Ohio River have experienced toxic algal blooms as a result of excess nitrates.
Light and sound pollution are also concerns of communities close to hyperscale data centers. Dr. Kat Kennedy, a sleep and circadian physiologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona, said during a recent interview with Dark Sky, an organization that fights light pollution, "exposure to light after dark can suppress the body's production of melatonin, a key hormone that signals it's time to sleep. Artificial light can confuse our internal clocks, potentially leading to sleep disturbances and cause changes at the genetic level. Some studies show that disrupting the light/dark cycle can affect the function of our genes."
Data centers emit loud noise 24/7, in some cases above 85 decibels (the safe level of exposure). Think of your kitchen blender on high. Diesel generators plus heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems create a constant hum that can be audible to neighboring residents and wildlife.
Data center proponents like to point a finger at citizens, claiming that we are responsible for the increased number of data centers. However, the recent increase in massive 100 MW data centers is not due to our phones or our use of the internet. A large percentage of data centers is attributed to cryptocurrency, AI computing, and video surveillance analytics. Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, use thousands of specialized computers worldwide to solve complex mathematical puzzles, which requires continuous, immense computational power. In May of 2022, the annual sum total of the power for global Bitcoin mining operations was equivalent to annual power usage for Argentina. As of 2024, 137 large scale crypto mines were identified in the U.S., while China has declared all virtual currency activities illegal in the fall of 2021 due to carbon emissions and illegal activities.
Studies show a sharp increase in construction of hyperscale data centers occurred at the same time platforms like ChatGPT and other AI chatbots became popular (2022). These programs are not like the internet of the ’90s where we could access data that has been loaded onto the world wide web. Searching the internet for data is like searching in a library for a book. Using ChatGPT requires much more computing power.
"A single query using an AI chatbot consumes the electrical equivalent of powering a lightbulb for 20 minutes; more than 10 times the power cost of a simple Google search." The use of these platforms is causing teachers at all levels to become AI police as students are tempted every day to use the easy way out for school work.
The U.S. government is using increasing efforts to monitor everything we do. AI technology has supercharged surveillance techniques. Video language models can search and analyze thousands of images for specific traits like "search for the man in a purple shirt.” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contracted with 11 tech companies for $513 million dollars in 2026 to provide surveillance tech and Trump's Executive Order 14179 "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence" is paving the way for more hyperscale data centers.
Make no mistake, we are entering a dystopian nightmare and it is time to put on the brakes before we can no longer control our destiny.