Physically and psychologically debilitating noise 24/7, light pollution, air pollution, chemical dumps in local waterways, additional devastating effects to humans, farm animals, wild animals, and insects, potential human deaths from all of the above, higher electric bills, possible water shortages and higher water bills, lower property values, and MORE!!!

We never, ever thought it would happen here. Trenton, Georgia, located in Dade County, is a beautiful small town located in a valley that is buffeted on the east and west by two mountains. You can’t go anywhere in this lovely community without running into someone you know. With the mountains and hills, it can’t be easy to perform construction here. I honestly thought that would protect our small town from data centers. I was wrong. DEAD WRONG.

We received news last night that the city is having an open meeting on November 23rd at 6:00 p.m. about a proposed data center in Dade County. The data center developer, Masterworks Atlanta, has met pushback on their proposed data centers before! Their CEO is Bernie Smith. He’s on LinkedIn if you want to send him your thoughts on this travesty.

If the reports I read are correct, it would be 500,000 to 880,000 square feet. To put that into perspective, you can fit approximately 15.63 American football fields (including end zones) or 18.75 playing-only football fields into 900,000 square feet. It will also be located near some residences. One woman on a local Facebook group reported today that she lives near the proposed site, and has three neurodivergent children. She said her children can’t even handle the lights in a Walmart parking lot at night. If the data center goes in, her family will need to move.

It’s well known that data centers can cause the following catastrophic issues that affect humans, animals, insects, and entire communities:

1. PHYSICALLY AND PSYCHOLOGICALLY DEBILITATING NOISE

Data centers emit a constant noise that can harms humans psychologically and physically. You can hear that noise RIGHT HERE. There are many other similar videos online. Search YouTube.com for: data center noise

Prolonged exposure to continuous, 24/7 hums, cooling fans, and low-frequency infrasound can severely degrade residents’ mental and physical health. That includes children, of course.

“The data center noise can cause sleep disturbances and deprivation, chronic stress, fight-or-flight responses, physical symptoms (headaches, vertigo, nausea, ear pain, ringing in the ears (tinnitus), teeth clenching, and elevated blood pressure (hypertension), and intense psychological distress, anxiety, and panic attacks, which some residents describe as feeling like they are ‘living in hell’“ – Environmental Health Sciences

2. PROPERTY VALUES

Nobody wants to live near a data center. If you need to move after one goes in near you, you might have trouble selling your home.

3. COMMANDEERING ELECTRICITY AND WATER

Also according to EHSciences.org, “AI data centers require enormous amounts of electricity, driving electrical grid expansion (new substations and transmission lines) that’s often paid for by residents, not the data center companies.”

“Residents often end up paying a portion of a data center’s grid and infrastructure costs due to traditional utility rate-setting models and massive spikes in energy demand.” – Harvard.edu

Data centers also “can generate enormous amounts of heat from continuously operating servers and cooling systems. This heat can warm surrounding neighborhoods and increase energy demand for nearby residents as they need more air conditioning.” – EHSciences.org 

So, not only do residents usually have to pay for part of the data center’s electricity usage, but nearby homes may pay higher electric bills because their homes will get too hot!

In our town, we already have issues with water. Sometimes it smells funny. Sometimes the pressure goes down. We have LOTS of farmers here! Large data centers need millions of gallons of water for cooling their systems. This puts a tremendous strain on local water supplies. But, even worse:

“Discharging heated wastewater back into rivers and waterways. This wastewater, also called blowdown, may contain salts and minerals, corrosion/scaling inhibitors, biocides, heavy metals from piping systems, refrigerants, and PFAS chemicals.” – EHSciences.org

4. HARM TO HUMANS AND ANIMALS

That same website states: “Hyperscale data centers require all-night lighting that disrupts the natural (circadian) rhythms of the body, including melatonin, which regulates sleep-wake cycles. This impacts humans as well as animals, putting wildlife at risk. Light pollution can disrupt migration patterns, reproduction, and feeding habits as well as confuse and disorient a wide array of species.”

If you’re on Facebook, THIS VIDEO tells the story of a farmer who got no new calves for two years. They were, instead, stillbirths.

That topic is discussed in THIS ARTICLE as well.

HARM TO MULTIPLE INSECTS, INCLUDING BEES, WHICH ARE ESSENTIAL FOR POLLINATION AND, THUS, OUR FOOD SUPPLY

We have lots of beekeepers in Dade County!

Data centers emit Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) and the release of heat into their surroundings. These harm humans, animals, and one insect that is essential to many lifeforms, including us: bees.

“Bees are crucial to the pollination of numerous different flowers, food crops and other plants.” – OPGov.news

Moths and Nocturnal Pollinators

Data centers utilize massive, unshielded 24/7 security lighting arrays that create intense artificial “sky glow.” Night-active insects like moths orient themselves by keeping the natural light of the moon or stars above them. This all disrupts their routes, causing them to circle the lights non-stop, leading to exhaustion, heavy predation, and disrupted egg-laying. Studies on street lighting show that blue-heavy white LED lighting can cut local caterpillar populations in nearby vegetation by up to half, drastically altering local food webs.

Fireflies (Lampyridae)

Fireflies rely entirely on precise, rhythmic bioluminescent flashes to locate and court mates in the dark. The continuous, high-intensity ambient lighting from data center campuses masks these signals. When males and females cannot see each other’s flashes, mating behavior fails entirely, causing localized population collapses.

Crickets and Ground Beetles

Continuous artificial light halts melatonin production and alters the expression of circadian rhythm genes in insects like crickets. This scrambles their natural sleep, feeding, and awake patterns. They also experience nutritional stress. Exposure to artificial night light has been shown to alter how ground beetles absorb and process nutrients, leaving populations structurally weaker and more prone to disease.

Spiders and Opportunistic Predators

Arachnids are deeply impacted by data center environments. The concentrated swarms of disoriented insects drawn to data center floodlights create artificial, high-density feeding zones shifting the local ecosystem balance by over-predating certain species.

5. POLLUTION

“Data centers host tens of thousands of servers that run twenty-four hours every day, and they require semiconductors, cooling systems, water treatment chemicals, and fire suppressants – all sources of PFAS forever chemicals.

“The American Lung Association’s “State of the Air” 2026 report identified data centers as an increasing source of air pollution concern due to both their electricity demand and diesel backup generators. Data centers rely on dozens of diesel generators that emit particulate matter, nitrogen oxides (NO?), and other pollutants linked to asthma, heart disease, and premature death.

“Data centers can increase environmental electromagnetic field (EMF) levels through the power lines, substations, transformers, and electrical distribution systems that supply them, as well as through internal equipment that generates extremely low frequency (ELF) fields, power quality distortion and harmonics (“dirty electricity”), electromagnetic interference. EMFs are linked to cancer, miscarriage, Alzheimer’s and other health impacts.” – EHSciences.org

6. SLAVERY AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

Data centers need lithium and other rare earth elements. Who’s mining those? In some cases, they are human slaves. Read this article from Fast Company: AI data centers have a human rights problem

7. LEGALLY TAKING LAND AND HOMES

In numerous cases across the country, data center developers, working with government authorities, are seizing land and homes through eminent domain. Fortune.com posted this article:

Power companies are using eminent domain to seize land for data centers as 70% of Americans say not in my backyard

8. FLOODING

Large-scale data center construction replaces natural ground with buildings, creating unnatural storm run-off. Several communities have found that nearby data center construction has caused massive flooding.

Here is just one of those stories:
Data Center Construction Linked to Flooding Damage in Nearby Neighborhood

9. DEATHS

“Our estimates show that U.S. data centers could contribute to various health outcomes including approximately 600,000 asthma symptom cases and 1,300 deaths in 2028 under the high-growth scenario, with total public health costs exceeding $20 billion.” – Environmental Protection Network

BUT, WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE “NEW JOBS???”

While data centers typically hire locally for construction of a center, that’s temporary. That means a short-term benefit for some, compared to a lifetime of hell for people living near the data centers.

Data centers typically have few employees compared to the size of the facilities, and those typically include data center technicians, network and systems engineers, facility and maintenance managers, security staff, and logistics associates. And, the company can hire people from elsewhere, and relocate them to the new facility. How many data center technicians and network and systems engineers do you think we have in our small town? Not many!

“Critics respond that these benefits are overstated, in part because data centers are among the least labor-intensive structures in the economy.” – Brookings.edu

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

THIS ARTICLE (look near the end) has a list of things communities can to do stop these monolithic monsters from taking over our towns.

THE PITCHFORKS ARE OUT, FOLKS!

Every local Facebook group (and many from nearby communities) was inundated with furious comments from residents last night and today. We will be attending the protest on the steps of the courthouse on November 23rd at 5:00 p.m. (before the meeting). I’ll keep you posted on what happens.

Got questions about Print On Demand and Self-publishing? Ask Angela Hoy.

About The Author

Angela Hoy is the publisher of WritersWeekly.com, the author of 24 books, and the co-owner of BookLocker.com (one of the original POD publishers that still gets books to market in less than a month), and Abuzz Press (the publishing co-op that charges no setup fees).

Angela has lived and traveled across the U.S. with her kids in an RV, settled in a river-side home in Bradenton, FL, and lived on a 52 ft Irwin sailboat. Angela now resides on a mountaintop in Northwest Georgia, where she plans to spend the rest of her days bird watching, gardening, hiking, and taking in all of the amazing sunrises.

WritersWeekly.com - the free marketing ezine for writers, which features new paying markets and freelance job listings every Wednesday.

BookLocker.com - According to attorney Mark Levine, author of The Fine Print, BookLocker is: "As close to perfection as you're going to find in the world of ebook and POD publishing. The ebook royalties are the highest I've ever seen, and the print royalties are better than average. BookLocker understands what new authors experience, and have put together a package that is the best in the business. You can't go wrong here. Plus, they're selective and won't publish any manuscript just because it's accompanied by a check. Also, the web site is well trafficked. If you can find a POD or epublisher with as much integrity and dedication to selling authors' books, but with lower POD publishing fees, please let me know."

Abuzz Press offers FAST and FREE book publication, but only accepts a small percentage of submissions, and only works with U.S. authors.

PubPreppers.com - "We Prep, You Publish!" Print and ebook design for authors who truly want to self-publish. Offers formatting and design services only, and then provides simple instructions for authors on where to sign up to have the print and ebook editions printed/listed/sold. Cut out the middle man. Keep 100% of what bookstores pay for your book!

Angela's POD Secrets Revealed Series can be found HERE.

Have a POD Book with another publisher? See if BookLocker can give you a better deal. (BookLocker offers "disgruntled author discounts" to those who want to move from other POD services.)

See BookLocker's publishing packages HERE.

ANGELA ON TWITTER https://twitter.com/AngelaHoy

BOOKLOCKER ON FACEBOOK - Provides links to free excerpts!
https://www.facebook.com/booklockerbooks

ANGELA ON FACEBOOK
https://www.facebook.com/angela.hoy.750

ANGELA ON LINKEDIN
https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelahoy/

Angela is the creator of the Original 24-Hour Short Story Contest!
https://24hourshortstorycontest.com/

Read More Of Angela's Articles HERE

HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING A BOOK?

Angela is not only the publisher of WritersWeekly.com. She is President & CEO of BookLocker.com,
a self-publishing services company that has been in business since 1998. Ask her anything.

ASK ANGELA!

CLAYTON JONES IS ALSO LOCATED IN GEORGIA: