alt Hacker News> causing a strain on local resources
By “strain on local resources” are you just stating the fact that they use resources? Or are you trying to imply that it causes problems for those resources?
Companies don’t just buy land, connect to water and power, and then the utilities get caught off guard when the water system is suddenly strained by water going somewhere. There are processes for approving this before connection.
If a new project is causing a “strain on resources” then the utility planners have failed that community.
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I agree that utility planners have their work cut out to plan for data centers. It's a different paradigm than what they're used to. I think they are being caught off-guard, but it's a matter of process and infrastructure. They typically plan around averaged or linear trends, but data centers can have volatile usage spikes, and supply can depend on e.g. seasonal rainfall which is challenging to predict.
You say that, but over and over we see things like
> You can't build an apartment complex here, because our water/sewer system is already over capacity
/ignores that statement and builds the apartment complex because "omg, we need more housing" arguments are used to not pay attention to consequences
/water and sewer system can't keep up and all kinds of expensive problems occur