Jul 6, 2026
Living near a hyperscale data center is not an enviable position. The developments are notorious gluttons of land, water and electricity, straining the grid as they sap up local energy supply and drive citizens’ bills up in the process.
Communities say the campuses, along with being rather unsightly, emit a dystopian ever-present hum and round-the-clock light that drive away local wildlife, while driving human neighbours bonkers. Add to that concerns of ground water quality impacts and the fine particulate matter and other pollutants they’re known to pump into the air, and you’ve got reasonable grounds to move. That is, if you can secure a decent price for your home by that point.
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Beyond these common woes that have many Americans fighting against proposed centers in their area, there are additional layers of trouble that start before a complex is even completed — including the mass influx of workers needed to construct the leviathan structures, which can span as many as 10 million square feet.
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Data centers create jobs — but not as many as towns hope
Any facility as large as one of these data hubs naturally spurs some job creation, but unfortunately, the exact figure tends to be lower than industry advocates claim; often, only “a fraction of the number of people who might work on the same square footage if it were an office park, factory or warehouse,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Many of the roles required of such a project are also only temporary for the building phase, with as few as 20 permanent positions per 100 megawatts, though it varies vastly depending on center size, whether the space will be proprietary or leased and other factors.
And for the labour-intensive construction, it seems that thousands of laborers are being shipped in from elsewhere rather than sourced locally, disrupting communities even further when they already feel as if the firms responsible aren’t doing their part to support locals in any way.
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‘Man camps’ and live-in training academies
Residents of Cheyenne, Wyoming, have faced the rapid transformation of their small city, which Microsoft, Meta and others have tapped for dozens of sprawling new processing campuses.
In addition to 10 centers already in operation in the county, 14 are in various stages of planning or fruition. With Cheyenne only having a population of around 66,000, there’s now a proposal to create at least one temporary neighborhood — known as “man camps” — solely for housing the upwards of 5,500 construction workers that will be brought into the area. At the planned size, it would be larger than 84 existing municipalities in the state.
Meta is also launching dedicated schools across multiple states to train a new workforce to build its centers, which can take one to three years to complete. Dycom Industries, which contracts for data center titans, is creating what it calls a “simulated town” across 49 acres in Georgia to serve as a “centralized hub for high-touch technical instruction” with “realistic conditions for hands-on fiber deployment and utility work.”
Some locals have expressed fears about an inundation of “men who are away from their families with no ties to this community;” pointing to the crime and violence that has come with similar “man camps” that cropped up during the coal-mining heydays.
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In a meeting on the proposal in Wyoming, the head of the county’s planning and development told residents that it would be best to be able to “keep an eye on 6,000 workers in one
one area than dispersing them throughout the communities,” the WSJ reported.
Though people continue to fight against their county becoming overrun with centers and the associated housing camps, there is a tone of resignation in many of the online posts about the recent developments.
“There doesn’t seem to be much we can do to stop data centers from coming to Wyoming. These projects are backed by large corporations and wealthy investors whose main goal is profit, not local impact,” one person wrote in a Cheyenne community Facebook group earlier this month.
“While they may say everything will be fine, many people are concerned about how much water, energy, and land they will use,” the person continued. “This raises bigger questions about how corporate development is shaping our communities and whether local voices are being heard.”
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Becky Robertson is a senior staff reporter at Moneywise and a lifelong writer. Along with more than a decade covering news at outlets like blogTO and Quill & Quire, she's attended writing residencies around the world. With 33 countries visited, she finds travel to be among her greatest inspirations.
