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Fight data center misinformation and achieve 8:1 margins in education versus value protection
Community pushback has become one of the most disruptive operational and legal bottlenecks for data center delivery, with public opposition shifting the “critical path” of data center development to local zoning and municipal approval processes. Municipal ordinances, conditional use permits, noise restrictions, and localized building moratoria have triggered hundreds of bans and blocks across the United States. What can data center owners and developers do?
According to CEO Meghan Reckling of Victory Field Operations, who spoke to RCRTech from YOTTA in Las Vegas, proactively educating communities before seeking reviews or permits can lead to 8:1 margins, as opposed to 3:1 margins, if you take the time to design data center proposals around community sentiment. “Intentional community engagement can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months of engagement, but helps bridge the gaps between what the industry is saying and what residents feel.” She explains that her company’s approach strays from traditional PR, instead operating “upstream” with field canvassers that go door-to-door in neighborhoods surrounding proposed data center projects. “We put boots on the ground to talk about people’s concerns and fears – many of which stem from lack of understanding and a natural fear of what they don’t understand.” Once fears about water use, electricity grid strain, noise are understood, they can be turned into actionable insight that informs data center design decisions.
Reckling says caring about what residents think goes a long way: for every dollar spent on proactive community education, local outreach, and building trust early on, a data center developer can protect as much as $8 in value. That’s what Reckling’s Data Center Field Intelligence aims to optimize, mapping community sentiment to projects and finding “persuadable” neighbors to help neutralize local NIMBY opposition that is based on misinformation. A high level of ground-level execution experience is necessary, as are physical operations to manage regulatory, political, and public engagement challenges.
“To move people from neutrality or opposition toward soft or even strong support, it’s important to first show community members that data centers have been around for many years, not just the last 24 months, and not just for AI, but for the photos, videos, and apps they love,” says Reckling. Too often, she says, everyday Americans find information on generation-1 data centers that, in their day, were “groundbreaking” but that today are outdated in terms of noise, water usage, and design. “The Titanic was groundbreaking in its day, but not compared to a Princess cruise ship of today,” which she points out is more advanced by an astronomical margin. “Approximately 59% of 600 people in a statewide Detroit Regional Chamber voter poll fundamentally misunderstood that photos and videos saved ‘in the cloud’ were not ‘floating in space’ but rather stored on physical hardware.”
Because talking about AI is very technical, she says it’s critical to convey the technology in terms and in a context everyone understands. “Data controls gas pumps, every swipe of credit card is data, everything we do involves data…so people disassociate what they do with the fact the data has to go somewhere.” She says once people understand how the technology works, they become more open to talking about the infrastructure behind it. The next step is to then explain the facts about the issues they fear, and the benefits in terms they understand and value. If talking about economic benefits, explain what improvements to schools can mean for education metrics and job multipliers. “It’s important to bridge the gap between what the industry says and what Americans fear. You have to go to the doorstep and talk facts, and talk about community investments, new energy infrastructure, donations to local non-profits.” Without that effort, she says, “9 times out of 10, people think data centers bribed local officials.”
When it comes to those local officials, Reckling has seen first-hand how locally elected leaders “don’t want to be the most hated member of their communities – in which their kids go to the same schools as their constituents, where they all run in the same circles.”
She said that any operators or owners who think this issue is going away after the November midterms should think again. “We started getting calls from people who build or operate data centers about 12 to 14 months ago, because they were taken aback by the intensity of community opposition. Many were at a loss when it came to community engagement and community interaction in the face of growing backlash.” After 3 decades of politics, she says, “this is the one issue that is non-partisan: residents and communities across the country have huge questions and concerns, motivating governors and regulators on both sides to make this a political issue. And it will not just go away after November 3.” She urges the industry to make an intentional plan around community engagement. “Get in there before misinformation spreads, and before influencers and agitators come in and stir up chaos.”
