I happened to be looking around at some datacenters on Google Maps in Chantilly, VA and I noticed that their neighbors were: a busy international airport, a quarry, various contractors such as paving and air compressor rental, and a bunch of car dealerships. There is a residential neighborhood nearby, but it's separated from the datacenters by a 6-lane divided highway. That's nice, that makes sense, that's how it's supposed to be.

The problem with datacenters is pretty much entirely the same as the problem with other industries. It's why we have industrial zoning, and yes people who live too close to industrial zones of all kinds tend to suffer ill effects (noise, pollution, ugly).

We don't see towns rushing to plop steel mills right in people's back yards and cut them subsidized electricity deals at everyone else's expense. So why should they do it for data centers? It shouldn't even be a question, none of this data center madness should be happening.

Heck, there are plenty of decommissioned/underutilized industrial zones already. Why aren't we building datacenters on top of old tank farms along industrial waterways? Or along interstate highways which are punishingly unpleasant to live near already?