Don’t just go to the city council, but reach out to others in the community. Politicians are a lot more likely to listen to a group of people than an individual.

Massive water use

Huge electricity demand — electrcity network upgrades, increased electricity prices for all. Constant demand 24/7.

Combined means higher utility bills for local households

Pollution risk — Backup generators and construction equipment

Noise pollution, 24/7 — Constant hum from cooling systems and periodic backup generator tests.

Industrial look & feel — Large, windowless warehouse buildings clash with residential or rural aesthetics,

Traffic & construction disruption —

Limited long-term jobs — very few local long-term positions are created.

Tax incentives - Benefit companies, not locals.

Property value decrease.

Lack of transparency - deals made behind closed doors. Compute could be used for war crimes.

They said they won’t read a big long letter with citations and everything

So basically they dont give a fuck and dont want to represent their community aka: do their jobs.

Your best bet to be heard is to either have simple, factual points supported by numbers of people. A single bulleted list of issues followed by a list of residents who concur is very useful and doesn’t even require people to spend their evening at a meeting.

Talk to a reporter and get them to interview the council about why they don’t went to hear rebuttels against a data center. Bring it up in council meetings and grill them about why they won’t hear rebuttels against a data center. Be loud about how the city council doesn’t went to hear rebuttels against a data center. If they’re going to dismiss your concerns, put the pressure on them to explain why they don’t need to hear your and other peoples voices and concerns.

The obvious ones are noise (well documented for crypto, not 100% on data center but wouldn’t be shocked.) and electricity rates going up for everyone because the data center hogs the juice. Less obvious is the lack of jobs it would bring. Construction would be nice but once its operational? Dozenish jobs or something paltry like that.

I think you should write the e-mail, and show it to them. And I think you should also show it to your community. Leave it in their mailboxes.

And if that does not work: I think we should all start being a little bit more aggressive. Key their cars. Set it on fire. Make it known that not listening to the governed, to the community, is a bad move.

Bullying is something that we need to start doing more often. Make it known that going against the people is worse than going against corporations. This is a war, the people vs the corporations. Corporations are fighting dirty. We need to do it too.

they won’t read a big long letter

Cool. Write them multiple letters. More importantly, get other people to write them letters - friends, family, coworkers, people you went to school with, cashiers and stockers in the shop, letter carriers, pizza delivery drivers, the local hiking group, book club, and historical society - anyone you can think of. It’s particularly good if the group has some natural alignment, so you can use some of their existing organization and contacts to further your cause. Hit up every local and regional group you can find via email, Contact Us, Facebook, whatever. Hell, stand in the most crowded part of town and hand out flyers.

Your flyers can be small if you need them to be (like if you’re printing them yourself) - say, a quarter of a page. You can do something like:

DATA CENTERS are
  * noisy
  * polluting
  * increase electricity rates
  * whatever else

CALL / WRITE: * Official contact info for the people making the decision (not home addresses)

SHOW UP: * Date, time and location of the next several meetings

Further info: a URL for more information and for getting together online and organizing. [1]

[1] Set up an email address - Gmail is fine, people recognize it as “legit”, so that people and organizations can contact you. Check it at least once a day.

Purchase a domain and make a really simple website. Have it replicate your flyer, but in more detail. Include references: link in news articles from Canada (Canadian-focused is great!) and the States (they likely have more areas that are more seriously affected) about how these things have affected locals. Add link(s) to a coordination and suggestion method: this could be one or more of a: Facebook group, a new subreddit, a discord channel, etc - whatever old and young people are using in your area. Also include your new email address (properly obfuscated to avoid bots) so that people can contact you.

Remember that whatever platform you organize on, some people who support you won’t be on it. You’ll have to choose between one method to build momentum and multiple methods to reach more people; your choice will likely depend on your timeframe. Have one of your options be “join our email list”; every time you organize an action or there’s an upcoming meeting, email everyone on your list.

Ask people to put signs in their yards and local businesses to put signs in their windows. It’s great if you can afford to buy signs, either yourself or by collecting money [check local laws for soliciting], but every bit helps.

Show up at every meeting they have, and get as many people to come as well. It would be lovely to have everyone joining you to speak, but even just the increased numbers and angry faces will have an impact. As possible, have each person speak to a different negative aspect of the data center, and have it be personal and relatable: “as a mom, I worry able the pollution”, “as someone who hikes/hunts/runs trips into the woods, I worry about the noise”, “as an elderly person/young person just moved out on their own/struggling parent I worry about the increased electricity rates”, etc. Be detailed but concrete.

Also, don’t just oppose this to local town councilors. Start pestering lawmakers at the county/district level, and province/territory level - this may be a local decision, but you can make an impact at higher levels as well - and if you get those higher levels on side as well, they can apply pressure downward.

Are there any local elections coming up? Run, or have someone else run, as a candidate, with one of their main planks being opposing the data center. The point isn’t to win the election; the point is for your candidate to continually force the other candidates to address the issue of the data center. That keeps it in the news, helps build momentum and pressure.

Contact news organizations: paper, radio, online, real-world, tv, podcasts, call-in radio shows - whatever you can reach. For every action you plan - council meeting, protest, letter-writing campaign, whatever - contact the media and let them know about it. If your event is upcoming, tell them a few days in advance so they can cover it live; if it’s something like a letter-writing or phone-in campaign, let them know in advance and ask them to follow-up with the contactee(s) a few days after, to “get their opinion on the recent protest” (also phrase this as an option if they can’t cover it live, they could call and ask about their response).

Designate someone to talk to the press and be available for interviews. If possible, it should be someone even-tempered, with clear talking points, a good public speaking manner, who looks good in business casual (which is what they should wear for interviews).

Contact other data center resistance groups and crowd source their ideas as well.

First of all, gather information about why data centers are bad for communities yourself. You need a clear understanding of what this topic is about if you want to be able to communicate these facts clearly. Otherwise anyone can discredit your concerns with a few questions you have no answer to. Secondly, find allies instead of trying to accomplish this on your own. Find local politicians who are likely to be on your side and contact them. Is there something like a regular town hall meeting? Environmental groups? Unions? You could present something there to find people willing to help. You need to amplify your voice to be heard.

they won’t read a big long letter with citations

That’s not unfortunate, that’s downright lazy and really shitty of them. That says to me that they see being on city council as a job, not as a public service.

Anyway, the main reasons would be water usage and contamination. Any water used in the data centres will likely be contaminated with PTFEs because that’s really the only kind of hose they can use to move water around all the electronics, AFAIK. Also the massive amounts of electricity that would be used *driving up the cost for everyone, not sure where you get your electricity though.

I suppose there could be more reasons, but those would be specific to your area.

Here’s a few of the biggest concerns, at least from what I’ve read about from people’s experiences living near existing ones.

• Water usage (can drain local groundwater, drive up water prices)
• Power usage (can drive up electricity prices, burns more fossil fuels or shifts clean energy to itself making other people now reliant on fossil fuels)
• Noise (people even at fairly large distances away can often still hear the sounds from the datacenter, it never stops and runs 24/7, can often give people nonstop headaches)
• Pollution (many datacenters have generators they can use, and they pollute the local air. Even if not run regularly as part of primary operations, many datacenters do tests anywhere from every month to every year to make sure the generators and backup systems work as intended, can suddenly generate a lot of air pollution without warning)

And that’s not to mention secondary effects, like how it can do things like draw in crowds of temporary workers that then incentivizes short term rentals (i.e. Airbnb’s) in the local area over actual homeowners, and can drive up housing costs, or how it can attract local subsidies that would otherwise go to smaller businesses that actually really need it.

Curious who “they” is ? Whoever told you that thinks they’re doing you a favor “Don’t spend days writing a thesis because we won’t really know what to do with it”.

You’ll get a lot further by talking to your representatives on the council. Here in Australia they’re very accessible, they publish an email address and phone number and are fairly responsive.

You basically want to tell them that you have some concerns and ask where they are in their approval process. There’s a range of possible answers which will be disappointing. One is that they already did environmental and social assessments and approved the development a year ago. Another is that the land is already zoned for this use and they can’t block or approve any specific plan for the property.

That said, they might tell you that there’s an upcoming request for public comment, or that there’s a semi-formal group of people that have already expressed some concerns and you might be able to slot in with them.

Alternatively, ask them whether they have any concerns, and what benefits they think the centre will deliver. At least then you can address your letter to the rep you spoke to and speak directly to the benefits they’re seeking.

They’re telling you that they don’t think there’s enough community support for your opinion to matter. May still be worth writing something but it sounds like they’re planning to throw it straight in the trash. I’d consider other options.

There are communities across the US where citizens are requesting data centers. These forums are open to the public and often recorded. You can do a simple search and find countless articles and then from there find minutes and voting records.

I would start there

You need to find some extremely rare & endangered species of plant or animal there, so that the place gets protected immediately.