10 easy reading basic facts about data centers

  1. A self sustaining data center will take up to 5 sq miles of land if it has a solar field for power. At a minimum it will be about 250 acres. The buildings can be up to 50 ft high.
  2. They produce a noise constantly. It comes from equipment like servers, generators, and cooling systems, creating a constant hum or loud operational sounds that can reach up to 96 dB(A) and be a significant issue for nearby residents and employees.
  3. Bloomberg Reported on September 29, 2025 that wholesale electricity in areas where Data Centers are built has risen as much as 267% in the past 5 years. Data centers increase local electric utility rates by driving up overall energy demand, which can strain grid capacity and force utilities to invest in costly infrastructure upgrades.
  4. The investors are rarely American. Sources say typically “Asian Pacific”.
  5. High Resource Consumption: A single data center can consume up to 4 megawatt hours of power—equivalent to the power used by 4,000 homes—and millions of gallons of water annually for cooling, straining local resources and infrastructure. For comparison There are only 600 homes in all of Spencer Township.
  6. Ineffective Tax Incentives: Tax breaks for data centers do not deliver the promised economic benefits, such as high-paying jobs, and they reduce local tax revenues, while shifting financial burdens onto communities and schools. They typically run on a 5-10 year no tax abatement then negotiate tax rates after that. They can threaten to leave if they dont get the numbers they like. This leaves the township and area with a massive unused complex that cannot easily be repurposed.
  7. Water Wells where Data Centers are built with water cooling ponds will often go dry because the depth of the pond is over 60ft. This was said to have happened in Bowling Green Ohio. Note: this would certainly dry up all of the farmland that is anywhere near a Data Center. One could easily speculate that Kitty Todd Nature preserve as well as wiregrass lake and Secor Metro Park could be effected. Yes these things are that big.
  8. Where Data Centers are built home values plummet. This is just common sense. If you have a nice home with a yard in a semi rural to rural residential area like Spencer Township then a massive Data Center is built near you your home value tanks. The noise and the hiked utilities and the giant thing visible from your property would negatively effect your investment without a doubt.
  9. A Data Centers average lifespan is 11-15 years. After a Data Center is decommissioned it will be the people in the area who must pay to have it torn down. 10s of millions of dollars are involved in the demo of a Data Center.
  10. After a Data Center is decommissioned it will be the people in the area who must pay to have it torn down. 10s of millions of dollars are involved in the demo of a Data Center.
Which way Northwest Ohio?