Op-Ed: Protect our neighborhoods and grid from unchecked data centers

I published this piece in the Union Leader. You can read it on their website.

I am livid. Once again, Republicans in our state government are putting Big Tech ahead of the health and welfare of New Hampshire residents.

Last Tuesday, the Republican majority in the State House Committee on Municipal and County Government voted to recommend a bill that would infringe on the ability of local governments to regulate the construction of data centers in their towns and cities.

As chair of the Hampton Select Board, I watch the Municipal and County Government Committee closely, and I am frequently frustrated by the tendency of state leaders to constrain our ability to act in the best interest of our neighbors. I am even more outraged by this effort because Republican state representatives are putting the interests of tech giants — who spend lavishly to lobby federal and state governments — ahead of the needs of residents in communities like mine.

I support my state senator, Debra Altschiller, who sponsored the original legislation as Senate Bill 439. Her bill sought to establish statewide requirements for data center development. As introduced, it would have limited data centers to commercial and industrial zones, established requirements such as setbacks and noise pollution limits, and enabled towns to further regulate data centers through their own local zoning rules.

Why limit and regulate data centers? My friend state Representative Tom Cormen laid out a compelling case in his op-ed in January (“Power-hungry data centers don’t fit New Hampshire realities,” Jan. 7). He pointed out the immense strain data centers would place on our power grid — a large facility consumes at least 100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 80,000 average homes.

Rep. Cormen, an emeritus professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth, also pointed out the water required to cool thousands of rack-mounted computers, and the ecological consequences of discharging that water into local ponds, lakes, and rivers. All that cooling requires fans, which generate significant noise pollution as well.

With all of this in mind, Senator Altschiller looked at the mangled version of her bill recommended by the House Committee on Municipal and County Government and said, “That is not a framework; that’s an abdication.”

AI technology developed by for-profit companies is transforming the labor market and the economy in ways we are only beginning to understand. It is being increasingly employed in warfare and surveillance. In Washington and Concord, our top priority should be safeguarding constituents — not fast-tracking Big Tech’s expansion. We can’t trust Big Tech to self-regulate when it has continuously prioritized profits over people. Right now, the people making those decisions are a handful of tech billionaires using their massive wealth to strike backroom deals with the Trump administration.

Working people need leverage to prevent rampant speculation and unregulated expansion from destroying our ability to support our families. If there are benefits to this technological revolution, working people deserve a share of them. That’s why I support Senator Altschiller — and would go even further by recommending a moratorium on data center construction until we have legislation that requires these companies to address and offset the impact of new data centers on public health, the environment, and energy prices, and until these corporations are subject to aggressive antitrust enforcement and robust data privacy protections.

In the last couple of months, we have just begun to see accountability for social media platforms that have been wreaking havoc on our public health and democracy for decades. These are the same tech companies that designed products to addict children and failed to protect kids from predators on their platforms. I don’t want to wait another twenty years for class action lawsuits against AI companies to finally deliver justice for their victims, when we can act now to prevent these harms from occurring in the first place.

Carleigh Beriont is a historian who teaches about the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. A Hampton resident, she chairs the town’s select board and is a Democratic candidate for Congress in the 1st District.