Stormwater ponds are the bare minimum, not a deal sweetener. A deal sweetener would be an ecological management plan which demonstrates a true desire to limit the environmental impacts of this development as much as possible. And no, a storm pond company that just pours chemicals into the water to control algae and plants invasive privets around does not demonstrate that.

You're saying the data center has a small footprint, but it does not. You don't need that much stormwater pond if you don't have giant impervious surfaces.

Deal sweetener is footprint (buildings, parking lots, and substation) being 1/6 of the land with the other 5/6 dedicated to nature preservation.

Not all wide open space is created equal. If it's wide open space with Eurasian grasses that get cut every few weeks, it's useless and has 0 benefit to the local ecology. Even if they weren't cut, they're still do very little for the ecology in the area.

If those forests don't have keystone tree species, then it's the same.

The people running these companies are so incompetent, they can't even do greenwashng right.