Why are local governments and Big Tech hiding the real impacts on local resources in their bids to construct their massive data centers? Here's one example from my local community. It is problematic when our local governments are complicit.
In June of 2026 Catawba County Government posted on their website “Joint Statement on Microsoft Data Center Development in Catawba County” apparently in response to all the negative publicity surrounding the construction of data centers in communities around the country.
This statement is a major whitewashing trick of the construction of these data centers in Catawba County by local governments and serves to hide and obfuscate what these will do to our local community and its resources.
What is left out of this joint statement on the development of Microsoft data centers in Catawba County? Sometimes these local government entities and local economic development organizations leave out important information and hope that citizens will miss what’s left out. They purposely leave out details, and they say things without being fully transparent, and Catawba local governments are no different here.
The addition of data centers in any community is going to massively impact that commuity’s resource availability. Resources such as water and power are impacted.
Power consumption and water consumption are the two largest areas of data center resource impact, and this “Joint Statement on Microsoft Data Center Development in Catawba County” leaves out large parts of the resource consumption story.
First of all, this statement says that “Microsoft will pay property taxers based on the full value of the buildings, equipment, and infrastructure located on site.” Sounds reasonable, correct? But what deals and incentives from our local taxes are being given as handouts to Microsoft? Who’s going to pay for the infrastructure needed to connect water, sewer, power, etc. to these facilities? Local governments often hide such costs from citizens and in this statement the entire costs of bringing in these data centers into our communities is not made clear and hidden.
Secondly, the statement says that these data centers “do not typically create significant school enrollment growth, daily commuter traffic, solid waste collection needs, or frequent police and fire calls for service.” What is hidden in this statement? This means that these data centers are NOT GOING TO BE BRINGING IN A LOT OF PERMANENT JOBS FOR THE CITIZENS OF CATAWBA COUNTY. If they were, then it only makes sense that the needs for all these would increase after its construction. Naturally, these data centers do not employ a lot people, hence they need no additional schools, roads for commuters, because there are no additional employees to use them.
Sure, there will be tons of temporary short-term jobs while they are constructed, but there is no long term employment benefit to these data centers.
Finally, the statement addresses water consumption. The statement says that Microsoft will “primarily rely on other cooling technologies” to cool their data centers. Translation: that means they will use air conditioning and that uses more power. One can then conclude that these massive data centers will use more power, driving up electricity costs for all in the area. That’s not to mention consumers having to pay through increase energy costs for the power infrastructure needed.
The entire statement tries to totally whitewash how these data centers are going to impact Catawba County residents. This same pattern has played out across the world as Big Tech companies move into local communities and try to hide their true impacts, and what’s worse, local governments are accomplices. No matter what this statement says, you can bet the citizen consumers of Catawba County are being asked to sacrifice in some way so that the county can have a Big Tech Trophy to put on its marketing brochures.
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