“We have to beat China on AI.”
Worst of seven tested arguments. Net negative with every subgroup including Republicans, and ranked last of the priorities tested.
Hand this to your council
Twenty objections, and what to say to each
Opposition to nearby computing facilities is high and rising, and it is not irrational — it is a response to specific, documented grievances. We went through every objection recorded in the research, ordered by how often it appears and how often it stops a project, and wrote our answer to each. Where we do not have a good answer, we say so.
Showing 20 of 20
The five that decide outcomes
“It will raise our electricity bills.”
Nothing is socialized. The machine sits behind an existing meter, on your own capital, below the thresholds that trigger an interconnection studyA utility's engineering review of whether the grid can serve a new large load, and what upgrades that would take.. No rate caseA regulatory proceeding in which a utility asks to change the rates its customers pay., no grid upgrade, no cost recovery from households.
“It will use our water.”
None. The cooling loop is sealed. Nothing evaporates, nothing is drawn from the mains, nothing returns warm to a creek. Air-cooled computing uses roughly half a gallon per kilowatt-hour; this uses zero.
“It will strain the grid.”
The opposite. It is small enough never to enter an interconnection queueThe waiting list of large new loads and generators awaiting a utility's review before they can connect., and as part of an aggregated fleet it becomes a resource that reduces demand when the system is tight.
“It's a waste of energy.”
The energy does not leave. It comes back as heat the building uses. Not a smaller version of a large facility — a different thermodynamic arrangement.
“It will ruin the look of the place.”
There is nothing to look at. A cabinet in a plant roomThe mechanical room in a building that houses its boiler, water heaters and pumps. in a building that already exists.
Where organized opposition starts
“It will be noisy.”
Engineered to an occupied-building acoustic budget rather than a machine hall. Liquid cooling removes most of the fan noise. Target published and measured at commissioning.
“You'll give away our tax base.”
We ask for nothing. No abatementA reduction or waiver of property tax, granted to attract a development., no TIFTax increment financing: pledging a district's future growth in tax revenue to pay for development in that district., no incentive, no jobs promise to break.
“This was decided behind closed doors.”
It cannot be. No applicant and no rezoning means the only way to buy one is a budget vote in open session against a published specification. We also sign no non-disclosure agreement with any public body, in writing.
“It will take farmland.”
Not one acre. No rezoning, no conversion.
“It will hurt property values.”
No substation, no transmission corridor, no new structure near anyone's home.
“Diesel generators will pollute our air.”
No new diesel. It uses the building's existing backup or pauses cleanly.
“Transmission lines will cross my land.”
None required.
The structural ones
“These always get sited where people can't fight back.”
Siting follows your own building, not the weakest bargaining position, and the community owns the asset rather than hosting someone else's. We publish a siting policy that declines placements a community has not chosen.
“I just don't want AI here at all.”Answered only partly
We answer this one only partly, and we would rather say so. Roughly a quarter of opponents hold this view and no engineering or siting choice touches it. What local ownership offers is that the community decides what it is used for, and that the system applies written rules rather than judging people. For some people that will not be enough, and that is a legitimate position.
“It will burden our water and sewer.”
Nil. No additional load on treatment or mains.
“They always promise things and nothing is enforced.”
There is no promise to enforce. You own the machine, you meter it, and from the day it is commissioned you read the numbers yourself.
“We'll overbuild and be stuck with it.”
Buy for steady state and draw on pooled capacity for peaks. Under-sizing becomes the safe choice.
“The state will override us anyway.”
There is no siting fight to preempt. You are the owner and operator of record.
“Construction will disrupt the neighborhood.”
There is no construction phase. Delivery and commissioning, measured in days.
“The heat is just dumped into the air.”
It is recovered into the host building — hot water first, space heating second.
And a public dashboard
Residents do not have to take any of this from a vendor. From commissioning, energy drawn, heat recovered, utilization and availability are published to a dashboard any resident can open, with the measures defined before deployment rather than after the first disappointing quarter.
The attack that kills public technology programs is not that the technology is frightening. It is that the money was wasted. Publishing the numbers, including the ones that disappoint, is the only defense that works.
Five questions you will be asked in the room, and the answer you can give
“Is this a data center?”
No. It is a cabinet in a plant room. It takes no land, consumes no water, and needed no rezoning to install. If it helps, compare it to the building's boiler rather than to anything on the news.
“Did you sign anything you are not telling us about?”
No, and here is the correspondence. Commitment two exists so that this question has a one-word answer.
“Aren't you just doing what Washington wants?”
The answer is the nine commitments, none of which any federal initiative asks for. Point at the abatement refusal in particular: no hyperscale developer can match it, because their model depends on the abatement.
“What happens when it is obsolete in three years?”
A fair question with no comfortable answer. Computing hardware depreciates faster than the schedules public bodies normally use. Get the upgrade path and the residual value position from the vendor in writing before the capital vote — including from us.
“Will this cost jobs?”
Commitment eight: agree with your workforce before you announce, not after. Announce without that agreement and the first hostile question comes from your own coalition.
Three arguments that have been tested and lost
Offered because someone will hand these to you.
“We all use the internet, so we're all responsible.”
A sitting US senator said a version of this in July 2026 and it became an attack line against him inside a month. Never tell an angry ratepayer they are the problem.
“The economic benefits speak for themselves.”
Benefits stated before conditions read as a sales pitch and confirm the suspicion that a deal has already been done.
Who should carry it
In the testing, small business owners and farmers moved opinion roughly 25 points net. Governors moved it 7. Technology employees moved it 4. Build the case around the clerk whose backlog cleared, not around yourself and not around the vendor.
Terms
- interconnection study
- A utility's engineering review of whether the grid can serve a new large load, and what upgrades that would take.
- rate case
- A regulatory proceeding in which a utility asks to change the rates its customers pay.
- interconnection queue
- The waiting list of large new loads and generators awaiting a utility's review before they can connect.
- plant room
- The mechanical room in a building that houses its boiler, water heaters and pumps.
- abatement
- A reduction or waiver of property tax, granted to attract a development.
- TIF
- Tax increment financing: pledging a district's future growth in tax revenue to pay for development in that district.