Catching up: I know it’s been a little while since I’ve published a longer investigative piece here, and I wanted to explain why.
For the past several weeks, I’ve been deep in research and writing a series of academic and scientific papers examining the impacts of large-scale data center expansion on local communities — particularly the environmental, infrastructure, energy, and water consequences that are so hotly debated today.
Those papers are only part of the story.
What I ultimately want to produce here is something broader: a public-facing investigation that connects the science, the policy, the corporate influence, and the lived experiences of the communities now being transformed by this industry in real time.
But I don’t want to write this piece from behind a desk.
I want to speak directly with the people fighting these battles on the ground — the residents watching forests disappear, utility costs rise, water resources strained, and entire communities reshaped around infrastructu…
