Data centers spark fears of a 'Digital Cancer Alley' in Louisiana | The Lens
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The Lens NOLA investigates how Big Tech’s data center boom in Louisiana and across the South could create a “Digital Cancer Alley,” fueling pollution, water shortages, and higher bills for Black and working-class communities while offering few local jobs. Explore the hidden costs, grassroots resistance, and the fight for environmental justice.

Crossposted from https://sh.itjust.works/post/46754580

A new report warns that Big Tech’s rapid buildout of data centers across the South could usher in a new wave of environmental and economic harms for Black and working-class communities, drawing parallels to Louisiana’s infamous Cancer Alley, the infamous span of petrochemical plants belching toxic smoke.

“Today, Big Tech is following in the footsteps of Big Oil, as they deliberately build data centers in the South, banking on disempowered cities and towns with large Black populations to not have the local power to fight back,” writes grassroots coalition MediaJustice.

There are more than $200 billion planned or ongoing data center projects across Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Virginia, and the rest of the South, according to the MediaJustice’s new report, “The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South.”

The buildout of high-tech data centers, framed as “progress” by companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, will leave residents with higher utility bills, water scarcity, and increased pollution in the long haul, advocates warn.

  • Ech@lemmy.ca
    36·
    2 months ago

    “Let’s write an article about the risks of all these data centers popping up to support text and image generation services!”

    “Great! What should the cover image be?”

    “Don’t worry, I heard of this great new service.”

    🤦‍♀️

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      Getting user reports over this. I’m learning toward letting it slide, cuz the post is about the content of the article and not its ‘art’, and I’d put a higher priority on putting the spotlight on data centers literally destroying the communities they’re in, than I would would to stamping out AI slop in images (as annoying and soulless as those images are…).

      Feel free to chime if you don’t think that’s the right call.