We Don’t Have a Data Center Problem. We Have a Trust Problem

As seen in Bob Clark Beyond

August 4, 2026 — Since founding Clayco in 1984, I’ve spent my career helping communities grow. Along the way, I’ve watched them wrestle with economic change.

Whether it was an office building, a parking garage, an automobile plant, a steel mill, a warehouse, an e-commerce distribution center, an advanced manufacturing campus, or now a data center, the conversation almost always starts the same way.

Someone asks, “What’s in it for us?”

That’s the right question.

Communities deserve answers. They deserve facts. They deserve transparency. They deserve to understand both the opportunities and the tradeoffs before making decisions that will shape their future.

Over the last several years, however, I’ve watched the public conversation around data centers drift away from the realities and innovations of today’s industry. Stories spread online about poisoned wells, mysterious health effects, unbearable noise, exploding electric bills, and secret deals being made behind closed doors. While some concerns are legitimate, others simply aren’t true. Unfortunately, they’re often presented with exactly the same confidence.

That should concern everyone.

The irony is that nearly every person repeating these stories depends on data centers every single day. Every text message, every online bank transaction, every streamed movie, every GPS route, every social media post, every AI prompt, and nearly every business in America relies on the very infrastructure many people now oppose.

This isn’t a technology that suddenly appeared two years ago.

America has been building data centers throughout my entire career. Some of my earliest work involved large-scale computing facilities for the federal government. Soon afterward, we were building mission-critical facilities for banks, healthcare systems, and other enterprise customers, long before anyone was talking about cloud computing or artificial intelligence. Today, Clayco has built more than 450 megawatts of data center capacity and has another 4,700 megawatts under construction. We’ve seen this industry evolve from enterprise computing to cloud infrastructure and now to the AI economy.

Along the way, we’ve also watched communities thrive because they embraced digital infrastructure. Places like Quincy, Washington; Elk Grove Village, Illinois; Des Moines, Iowa; Phoenix, Arizona; Cheyenne, Wyoming and many others have experienced billions of dollars in investment, thousands of construction jobs and long-term economic growth because they chose to participate in building America’s digital future.

Does that mean every project is perfect?

Absolutely not.

There have been projects proposed and even built too close to established neighborhoods. There have been temporary facilities operating on generators while waiting for permanent utility connections. There have been projects proposed in places where water resources demanded far greater scrutiny. There have been developers who communicated poorly. There have been utility companies that failed to explain what infrastructure upgrades actually meant for ratepayers. There have been public meetings where residents felt decisions had already been made before they were invited into the conversation.

Those criticisms are fair.

Developers also have to acknowledge that the traditional economic development process can appear suspicious to people who may not be familiar with it. 

I’ve been negotiating real estate and economic development projects for decades. Confidentiality agreements aren’t designed to hide information from the public. They’re designed to protect competitive negotiations between communities and companies until agreements are finalized.

That’s standard practice whether you’re recruiting an automobile manufacturer, an aerospace company, a pharmaceutical plant, a semiconductor facility, or a data center.

Unfortunately, what is normal inside economic development often looks secretive from the outside.

That perception matters.

The industry needs to develop new ways to protect legitimate business confidentiality while giving communities greater confidence that decisions are being made openly, responsibly and with meaningful public engagement.

Trust matters as much as technology.

The other side of this conversation deserves equal scrutiny.

There are organizations and advocacy groups spending significant time and money opposing data centers, often repeating dramatic stories that fall apart under careful examination. A jar of dirty water becomes proof that a data center destroyed a well. A low-frequency hum becomes evidence that livestock stopped reproducing. Routine permitting practices become evidence of massive conspiracies.

I’ve also seen how this fear and distrust can completely overwhelm communities, stymying the opportunity for a more thoughtful and open public conversation. Whether someone supports a project or opposes it, decisions this important should be based on facts.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Communities deserve better than slogans from either side. They deserve facts. They deserve engineering. They deserve measurable data. They deserve open conversations about both the benefits and the tradeoffs.

That means discussing every concern honestly.

Land use.

Noise.

Electricity.

Water.

Jobs.

Not with talking points.

With measurements.

With independently verifiable information.

With comparisons people can actually understand.

And, whenever possible, by visiting facilities that have been operating successfully in communities across America for decades.

Not every data center is the same. Some facilities resemble industrial manufacturing plants. Others are essentially highly sophisticated warehouses filled with computer servers. Smaller edge facilities serve entirely different purposes than multi-building hyperscale campuses.

Lumping every project together makes as much sense as calling every building a factory.

We can do better than that.

America has always prospered by building the infrastructure that powers the next generation of economic growth.

Railroads.

Highways.

Airports.

The electric grid.

The internet.

Today’s digital economy depends on data centers just as yesterday’s economy depended on rail yards, interstate highways, and power plants.

The question isn’t whether America will continue building them.

The question is whether we’ll build them responsibly, communicate honestly, and ensure the benefits are shared by the communities that make them possible.

That’s a conversation worth having.

One based on facts, not fear.

Over the next several weeks, I want to take the biggest concerns about data centers one at a time: land use, noise, electricity, water, and jobs. I’ll share what I’ve learned over more than four decades of building these facilities, where our industry needs to improve, and where the facts challenge some of the most prevailing fears.

Communities deserve honest answers.

That’s where this conversation should begin.