Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#41

Post by peyton » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #21

arcbyte wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

5G towers have no negative externalities except looking kinda dorky. In fact, they're nice; they improve your reception. The same cannot be said for data centers. (Instead of just downvoting this, I'd appreciate it if you could point out exactly what I said is wrong. Thanks.)

I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.” Non-pecuniary externalities, in the Pigouvian sense, are really something you analyze to achieve efficiency. In this case, following a 5-year permitting process and plopping the industrial activity on industrial land is basically a form of bargaining and is probably acceptable from a social efficiency standpoint. Amazon’s hardly mining cobalt next to a daycare here.

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#42

Post by InsideOutSanta » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC

peyton wrote: post #41

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G towers have no negative externalities except looking kinda dorky. In fact, they're nice; they improve your reception. The same cannot be said for data centers. (Instead of just downvoting this, I'd appreciate it if you could point out exactly what I said is wrong. Thanks.)

I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.” Non-pecuniary externalities, in the Pigouvian sense, are really something you analyze to achieve efficiency. In this case, following a 5-year permitting process and plopping the industrial activity on industrial land is basically a form of bargaining and is probably acceptable from a social efficiency…

> I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.”

But that's pretty much the definition of the term. It's a negative impact on a third party. If I'm living next to a data center, and it's noisy, or my electricity costs more, those are negative externalities.

There are real reasons not to want data centers next door, unlike 5G towers.

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#43

Post by xtiansimon » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

derektank wrote: post #10

This headline seems misleading at best. There was, as far as I can tell reading both this piece and the original reporting in the WSJ[0], no community vote for or against data center construction. What appears to have happened is that Amazon simply followed the existing permitting rules for other industrial construction, “Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development direct…

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and waiting to read an example. This might just be the first I’ve read.

> “…by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago”

I live on Long Island NY. Here on LI and Upstate there are a surprising number of former industrial land and abandoned buildings. It’s the whole package—loss of jobs, years of post-industrial decline, lost revenue and old rules on the books. Ripe for a new industry which, like remote workers, doesn’t need to be located next to the larger communities where their work product is consumed. Gentrification or redevelopment of agricultural land into boiling data centers are the outcomes.

> “It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy …” Bozzo said.

It’s a dirty fight. All sides.

Amazon wants to build on cheap land, and not on parcels the cities want cleaned up.

I’m wondering why these data centers are such a nuisance. We’ve had data centers for years. Is it just the fast growth and number? And is there good public data on their sustainability regarding water and electricity and environmental impact? If cities have failed, it’s turning a blind eye from collecting this data.

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#44

Post by Matl » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #34

ajross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things can be true: the construction can be technically legal and at clear odds with community opinion. I mean, yes. Amazon can likely do this. But is this strategy really in keeping with its long term interests? I mean, look at the comments in the rest of this very topic. Do you want a communist insurrection? This is literally how you get communist insurrections. People are fucking pissed, and the bourge^M^M^M^M…

6 years ago when the work to build the data center started, nobody cared about data centers. Should 6 years of planning be thrown away because data centers have recently become fashionable to hate?

So noise and pollution that makes it impossible to live in or sell your house is now simply 'fashionable' to hate?

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#45

Post by slg » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

paulnpace wrote: post #33

slg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic? This ain’t the culture war. The public at large is fairly united on one side of this across the typical US political divides. If you want to dismiss this with a cute label to pretend that there aren’t any real concerns here, the only label that comes close to matching the actual dispute is class war.

Indeed. It is not clear to me why a community that is in opposition to something that will likely cause it to experience net negative economic impact are engaging in a "culture war".

If this can be reduced to a culture war, all of politics is a culture war, making the term meaningless.

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#46

Post by ofjcihen » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #34

ajross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things can be true: the construction can be technically legal and at clear odds with community opinion. I mean, yes. Amazon can likely do this. But is this strategy really in keeping with its long term interests? I mean, look at the comments in the rest of this very topic. Do you want a communist insurrection? This is literally how you get communist insurrections. People are fucking pissed, and the bourge^M^M^M^M…

6 years ago when the work to build the data center started, nobody cared about data centers. Should 6 years of planning be thrown away because data centers have recently become fashionable to hate?

6 years of planning can be thrown away if the community is just now becoming aware of the potential impact.

It’s not on the community to adhere to the companies looking to make a profit while ignoring how their presence affects those around them. Quite the opposite really.

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#47

Post by ajross » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

Matl wrote: post #44

Miner49er wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 years ago when the work to build the data center started, nobody cared about data centers. Should 6 years of planning be thrown away because data centers have recently become fashionable to hate?

So noise and pollution that makes it impossible to live in or sell your house is now simply 'fashionable' to hate?

This is going to sound like I'm flipping sides in this thread: but yeah, absolutely. Otherwise people in Gilroy would have hated datacenters when the planning started and Amazon would have built in Fresno or wherever.

Really both sides are insane in this battle. People are angry about social change, injustice, perceived loss of status and are taking out those frustrations on totems like "Buildings Owned by Big Tech". Which is wrong. But it's equally wrong to ignore those concerns and try to align with their political enemies, which only makes this worse. (We saw exactly this thing happen with the vaccine madness just half a decade ago!)

To wit: we're all going to hell in a handbasket and this community is 100% as much at fault as the big data opposition front.

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#48

Post by mindslight » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

peyton wrote: post #41

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G towers have no negative externalities except looking kinda dorky. In fact, they're nice; they improve your reception. The same cannot be said for data centers. (Instead of just downvoting this, I'd appreciate it if you could point out exactly what I said is wrong. Thanks.)

I think we should refrain extending “negative externality” to mean “things people don’t like that might affect them.” Non-pecuniary externalities, in the Pigouvian sense, are really something you analyze to achieve efficiency. In this case, following a 5-year permitting process and plopping the industrial activity on industrial land is basically a form of bargaining and is probably acceptable from a social efficiency…

I'd say you're trying to define some ambiguous criteria to keep harms illegible to the analysis and thus deny that they exist. Noise pollution is very much pollution, certainly causes real problems, and falls right into the externality paradigm wherein a party unilaterally causes harm while making others suffer it.

That the effects of noise pollution are hard to formally describe (and extra hard to quantify in monetary terms) does not mean we can just throw up our hands and pretend they don't exist. In fact, I'd say this is exactly why we stake out lofty non-economic ideals like human rights etc - markets have friction (ie are not efficient), and this combined with your reasoning means we could justify anything that produces negative outcomes for humans by simply writing it off as non-economically-legible. But the entire human-value justification for letting markets do their thing rests on the positive benefits they bring to us humans, so that is absurd. And so we always need to look at the larger picture and judge the real-world effects on humans.

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#49

Post by fzeroracer » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #38

fzeroracer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false and easily provable by simply looking at the location on the map [1]. It's very clear that it's being built near housing and schooling. Especially a big deal as there's been more recent cases of exceedingly loud data centers carrying noise quite a distance. [1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/D5PDUa62B5weCcqZ7

If noise is the concern then regulate noise. Don’t restrict data centers. If someone’s house has a dog that barks continuously, you aren’t going to say building houses here are restricted. Instead you restrict barking dogs, which is what cities do.

And companies frequently ignore city-wide noise ordinance thanks to corruption and kickbacks.

Re: Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center

#50

Post by ACCount37 » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

Matl wrote: post #44

Miner49er wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 years ago when the work to build the data center started, nobody cared about data centers. Should 6 years of planning be thrown away because data centers have recently become fashionable to hate?

So noise and pollution that makes it impossible to live in or sell your house is now simply 'fashionable' to hate?

Yep.

The "noise and pollution" of a datacenter are bordering on nonexistent. The same goes for water use concerns and more. The environmental concerns are extremely overblown - but NIMBYs really don't need much to get going.