Nobody wants this in their backyard – yet for many Americans in rural communities, there isn’t much of a choice.

In Utah, the Box Elder County Commission recently voted unanimously to go through with building a 40,000-acre data center on unincorporated, privately owned land after a contentious meeting where residents – the ones who will have to live next to the monstrosity – mostly voiced their opposition.

“It's not like we are being heard here anyway,” one man in the crowd yelled, per The Salt Lake Tribune.

The data center, once completed, will use more than two times the energy used in the entire state. It will generate great amounts of air pollution and noise pollution, and will use thousands of gallons of water, which is already a scarce resource in the area. At the cost of the environment and residents’ sanity, the county estimates that 2,000 permanent jobs will be created.

The problem isn’t solely in Utah. Across the country, more than 1,500 data centers are in various stages of development, with the majority of these plants being proposed in rural communities. 

While data centers are necessary to keep up with artificial intelligence’s ever-growing presence, it’s clear that these businesses are unwanted in many of the communities where they are ending........

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