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U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/u-s-govt-moves-to-suppress-pushback-on-data-centers-by-removing-requirements-for-public-input-on-pollution-epa-change-would-allow-air-pollution-permits-without-publicizing-them
40•rbanffy•46m ago

Comments

vintagedave•33m ago
> The latest proposal applies to permits for a "minor source" of air pollution ... [the Vantage data center was estimated to contribute] between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages, the largest estimate for any single facility ever.

'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.'

'Minor source.'

I give you double-speak, gentlefolks of HN. Name it something - anything - and you frame it in those terms forever. It will take significant work to not refer to these as 'minor sources' when debating if they are a minor source.

internet_points•19m ago
https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant... the report

> Based on Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ) air permit No. 74242, the facility is authorized to operate eight natural-gas simple-cycle turbines and more than fifty diesel generators, including emergency and black-start units

consp•15m ago
So it is a low efficiency power station with some servers attached to it.
docdeek•8m ago
FTA: 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.'

From the researcher: 'We estimated between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages from associated air pollution — among the largest health-damage estimates produced for a single facility to date.' [0]

Still enormous, but there is a significant difference between being 'THE X of all time, and being 'among the X of all time'.

Regarding 'minor source', in this case the expected additional premature deaths in the research range from 3.4 to 6.5 annually. [1] At the same time, air pollution leads to about 100,000 deaths a year in the US. While tragic at an individual level, adding 0.006% to the annual premature death count is fairly minor, just as reducing the deaths to 999,994 would be considered a pretty minor fix to the issue.

[0]: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health...

[1]: https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant...

[2]: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/identifying-sources...

vintagedave•4m ago
This is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49446879
j1elo•3m ago
- 'How many fingers, Winston?'
feverzsj•27m ago
It doesn't matter, as long as officials are still elected by locals.
Avicebron•11m ago
Right? These people approvinf these projects are still living in the communities they are damaging
flanked-evergl•21m ago
This degrowth anti-technology mindset just does not make sense to me, and I think it's mostly astroturfed from TikTok.
goda90•13m ago
What part confuses you? The threat to stable and affordable electricity and water supply? The water, light and noise pollution? The threat to jobs? The threat to truth and transparency? The threat to privacy?
ozlikethewizard•5m ago
I'm sure the luddites got all their ideas from TikTok aye?

At least were not at this point yet:

"Mill and factory owners took to shooting protesters and eventually the Luddites were suppressed by legal and military force, which included execution and penal transportation of accused and convicted Luddites."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites

ModernMech•19m ago
It’s funny as Greg Abbott says the data center industry did this to themselves and people’s complaints are justified; the feds say it’s “paid protestors”, the same way they say any protests are inorganic paid leftist agitators. Meanwhile “real” American patriots know data centers make America great, and can’t wait to have one built down the road.
cmiles8•15m ago
There isn’t much the federal government can do here. Planning permission is very local in the US. If local officials don’t want a data center it isn’t happening.

In most communities these days you’d have better luck proposing to build a toxic waste processing facility than a data center.

roosterIllusi0n•6m ago
They can certainly look the other way when these small town boards get paid off to allow the datacenter.
oefrha•10m ago
What I don’t understand is that the vast majority of LLM workloads are pretty damn latency-insensitive. Why can’t they build these data centers where there’s little to no opposition? Sure someone will need to maintain the data centers, but with trillions in investment lined up, surely they can just pay people enough so they’re okay with living in the middle of nowhere.
jhanschoo•4m ago
They can, surely, but I presume that in some cases there's a lack of preexisting regulation on land use and on others politicians are not properly representing the interests of their constituency.
uniq7•4m ago
Datacenters need a source of water, and human populations are usually concentrated in those places too for the same reason.
Phemist•3m ago
It seems that e.g. OpenAI is mostly power constrained. To go to the middle of nowhere would mean also basically no power grid to speak off?
armada651•2m ago
It's difficult getting a grid connection and fiber optic uplinks in the middle of nowhere.
plasticchris•2m ago
Because they need the local infrastructure to support them, which would be difficult and expensive to reproduce out in the middle of nowhere.

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