Data centers deserve scrutiny, not blind trust

I think the argument for data centers is easy enough to understand. They are the industrial backbone of the digital economy: the places where cloud services, streaming, finance, logistics, and some artificial intelligence systems run.

But data centers and AI are not the same thing and treating them as if they are muddies public debate and obscures the real choices companies and governments still have to make.

A community can question the scale, location, or terms of a data center project without rejecting AI as a field, just as officials can promote AI innovation without pretending every large server campus is inevitable.

Supporters, including some county commissioners, say this build-out is necessary if Burke County wants to remain competitive, and they point to tax revenue, construction work, and the promise of future investment.

Fine. That case deserves to be heard. But the harder question, to my mind, is not whether data centers matter. It is who should be trusted when the benefits are marketed broadly while the costs are borne locally.

That, to me, is the heart of this debate. It is not really about whether data centers should exist. It is about what communities like Hildebran are being asked to accept in order to host them.

Commissioners, local officials, and business advocates point to tax revenue, construction work, and prestige. Some of that may well prove true.

But when the promises are broad and the consequences are local, residents have every right to ask harder questions before those promises harden into policy.

The clearest concern is infrastructure. Data centers draw enormous amounts of electricity, and that demand does not arrive gradually. It comes in large blocks that can reshape local decisions about substations, transmission lines, and long-term utility planning.

Even when national energy use is framed as manageable, the burden lands unevenly. Communities like Hildebran are left to ask whether their grid and their ratepayers are being asked to absorb the cost of someone else’s growth strategy.

Water, frankly, is where this gets even harder to wave away. In drought-prone areas like Burke County, residents are told that server farms are a clean, modern form of development, as if sleek branding cancels out basic resource demands.

It does not. Cooling systems can require significant water use, especially at campus scale, and this debate is unfolding while Charlotte Water is seeking to raise its authorized interbasin transfer from the Catawba River Basin from 33 million gallons a day to 63 million.

To me, that is not just a technical adjustment. It is a political warning about who gets to claim scarce water, who is expected to bear the risk, and how quickly public officials are willing to reframe private development needs as regional necessity.

Add backup generators, noise, land-use conflicts, and pressure on existing utilities, and the public hears a familiar message: trust the process, trust the technology, trust the developers.

I think citizens should be asking something tougher: who benefits, who pays, and why these decisions so often seem to be made before the public is fully informed?

The economic argument deserves the same skepticism. Developers and elected officials often emphasize jobs, tax receipts, and future investment, as if repeating those promises often enough turns them into proof. It does not.

Many large facilities create few permanent jobs after construction ends, even as they secure tax incentives, land-use concessions, discounted utility arrangements, and fast-tracked approvals that shift risk onto the public while protecting private upside.

I do not see that as simple economic development. I see it as a familiar form of political bargaining in which communities are asked to subsidize projects first and audit the benefits later.

A well-negotiated project with clear safeguards and transparent terms could still benefit the county, but that is exactly why residents should insist on details before officials start celebrating the deal.

Citizens should not be expected to accept on faith what public records, enforceable commitments, and honest cost-benefit analysis ought to prove.

That is why the real issue is governance, not technology. Burke County residents are not skeptical because they are anti-internet or anti-AI. They are skeptical because negotiations are often unclear, sustainability claims are hard to verify, and public hearings can leave citizens feeling as though their concerns are secondary.

Keeping data center placement separate from broader arguments about AI would make the debate clearer, because it would force officials to defend the actual tradeoffs in land use, power, water, and tax policy rather than wrap them in the aura of innovation.

If county commissioners and local leaders want the public’s trust, they must show that citizens’ concerns carry more weight than a developer’s assurances. Trust will not come from branding.

It will come from enforceable conditions: public reporting on electricity and water use, independent impact assessments, meaningful hearings, and community benefit agreements that remain in force after the ribbon cutting.

So, who should the public trust? In my view, not companies by default and not elected officials simply because they promise growth.

Trust has to be earned through transparency, verifiable data, and a process in which communities can say no as well as yes. If commissioners and local leaders want to approve projects that consume enormous public resources while locking in long-term consequences, they should have to defend those decisions in full public view, not behind slick talking points about innovation and inevitability.

Data centers may be important infrastructure, but importance does not excuse weak oversight, rushed approvals, or subsidies disguised as strategy. No project built on private assurances, public cost, and limited public leverage deserves automatic approval.