I’ve been fielding phone calls about data centers these last few weeks.

That sentence still feels strange to write.

Not because data centers are obscure. They are not. They are the buildings behind the cloud, the warehouses behind the apps, the physical internet sitting quietly behind all the magic.

What is strange is that this conversation is no longer happening in a conference panel in San Francisco. It is happening here. In city council meetings. In parking lots. In phone calls. In the east valley. In the desert.

Which tells you something.

People are paying attention in a way they were not six months ago. Not because everyone suddenly read an energy report. Because residents showed up to a public meeting and realized the future was carrying approved blueprints.

The warning shot came from Imperial Valley.

A proposed data center complex near the city of Imperial moved forward after the county exempted the project from state environmental review. Residents showed up in force. So did union construction workers from surrounding counties, who filled much of the room.

The residents waited outside.

That is not a procedural footnote. That is the preview.

When projects are large, technical, and politically attractive, the public process can become something residents experience from the parking lot. That should bother everyone — whether you support data centers, oppose them, or are still trying to figure out what one actually means for your electric bill.

Avenue 52 and Fillmore to be precise.

A proposed technology campus in Coachella that could eventually grow to hundreds of acres and multiple data centers. More than 250 residents spoke out across April's city council meetings. Their concerns are not mysterious.

Water. Electricity. Air quality. Noise. Farmland. Schools. Neighborhoods. Transparency. The feeling that once momentum builds, the public gets invited to react instead of participate.

The project has not been approved. An environmental impact report has been identified as part of the process. Thanks for that.

KESQ's Athena Jreij has been covering this harder than anyone — showing up to the Civic Center, waiting around for hours, asking the questions that take longer than one news cycle to answer. The interview she got with Mayor Frank Figueroa this week was… careful. I do not say that to criticize the mayor. Careful answers are what you get when the hard questions have not yet been asked loudly enough — and when every answer has to survive the room, the lawyers, and the press release.

There is a community forum scheduled for May 11. Consider going. Not because you need to arrive with a finished opinion. But because you deserve to hear the answers before the foundations are poured.

On the other side of the country, Maine nearly became the first state in America to pause large data centers statewide.

The Legislature passed a moratorium bill. Governor Janet Mills vetoed it.

She did not say the concern was silly. She did not wave away the scale of the issue. She said a pause was appropriate given the impacts large data centers can have on electricity rates and the environment. She vetoed the bill because it did not carve out a specific brownfield redevelopment project at a shuttered paper mill.

That is the entire data center debate in miniature.

A state sees the risk. A community sees the jobs. A developer sees the land. A utility sees the load. Residents see the bill.

And everyone calls it economic development.

Maine is not alone. Other states are already examining moratoriums, restrictions, tax incentives, grid impacts, and ratepayer protections. This is no longer a niche tech infrastructure story. It is becoming a local governance story.

And those phone calls? Pretty much the same questions:

What does a data center actually do? What does it cost? Who benefits? Who pays? Who gets the jobs? Who gets the infrastructure? Who gets the noise? Who gets the tax revenue? Who gets the risk? Who gets the upside?

And maybe the most important question: do we need local data centers to have an AI future?

The answer is no. Not really.

The Coachella Valley can use AI, teach AI, build AI-enabled businesses, modernize local institutions, and create startups without hosting hyperscale compute in our backyard. Participating in the AI economy and hosting the physical infrastructure of the AI economy are not the same thing.

A data center does not automatically make us an AI hub. A server farm does not automatically create startups. A substation does not automatically upskill our workforce or students.

That distinction matters.

So this weekend, I went deep on the research and published a Civic Intelligence Report called The Server Farm Next Door. It looks at data centers, AI infrastructure, utilities, water, land use, ratepayer risk, and community benefit — and the question our region now has to answer:

If the AI economy needs physical infrastructure, why are certain communities asked to host the costs while distant companies capture most of the upside?

This is not an anti-technology piece. It is not a pro-developer piece. It is the civic version of looking under the hood before buying the car.

So go ahead and read the full report.

Pour something if it helps.

But read it before the conversation gets reduced to jobs versus protest, progress versus fear, or one more glossy rendering with a suspiciously perfect desert sunset.

Because data centers are not just technology. They are land, water, power, politics, and public trust.

And before the next phase of the internet gets built right here in the desert, the desert should know exactly what it is being asked to trade.

Read The Server Farm Next Door →

Sat Singh is building an AI startup ecosystem in the Coachella Valley and uses an inordinate amount of compute from data centers he cannot confidently locate — which, inconveniently, is part of the point.

P.S. There is also a shorter companion brief on AICV - start there if you want the signal before the full report: Read the brief →