(DCNF)—A conservative parents’ group is telling families that not every data center coming to their town is bad news, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
American Parents Coalition released a guide laying out what parents should demand from data center developers before projects break ground, according to a copy shared exclusively with the DCNF. This comes as the race to build data centers to meet the demands of artificial intelligence has fueled backlash nationwide over water use, noise and electricity bills.
“Parents have enough on their plates and should not have to become infrastructure experts to understand how a proposed data center will affect their family and community,” Alleigh Marré, executive director of American Parents Coalition, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Companies have a unique opportunity to build goodwill, add value, and be welcomed within a community by outlining and negotiating terms that work for both the industry and the safety and security of our shared future.”
The guide gives parents four questions to put to developers about whether a data center project is “good” or “bad”: what the project will concretely do for the town, where its water will come from, how much power it needs and how it plans to treat the people living nearby.
For instance, nearly half of property taxes in Loudoun County, Virginia are supported by the region’s data center facilities, the guide states, according to The Center Square. Loudon County has roughly 250 data centers, the most in the U.S.
Meanwhile, a Microsoft data center in Boydton, Virginia, cools itself with outside air for about 85 percent of the year, requiring no water to accomplish this, the guide says, according to a 2026 Northern Virginia Technology Council report.
Newer data centers increasingly reuse the same cooling water and supply their own power, according to the guide. It highlights DeKalb, Illinois, where a data center funded $48.5 million in three years’ worth of property taxes and also supported school and public services.
The guide acknowledges that some fears about data centers are legitimate and grounded in fact, pointing to older facilities in Virginia that went through more than two billion gallons of local drinking water to cool their equipment. Likewise, it cites a Wisconsin lawsuit in which residents accused a developer of “unreasonable and excessive noise.”
Parents are encouraged to get involved in their local community and discuss data center issues in person and online, the guide states.
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