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Community acceptance may be emerging as one of the most consequential constraints on data center growth.
On this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show, DCF Editor in Chief Matt Vincent speaks with Buddy Rizer, Executive Director of Loudoun County Economic Development, and Adam Waitkunas, founder of Milldam Public Relations, about the rising political and community resistance confronting data center development — and what the industry needs to do differently.
After two decades working with the world’s largest data center market, Rizer said the current level of opposition is unlike anything he has seen before.
“The pushback is universal,” he said. “The talking points are fairly standard from community to community, and it has really become next to impossible to do business.”
Rizer believes the industry’s next major constraint may no longer be purely physical.
“We thought it was going to be power, but it may be community acceptance and political durability.”
The discussion examines how distrust can overwhelm even strong factual arguments. Rizer noted that Loudoun County’s more than 250 data centers collectively use less than 10% of its water system and have generated enormous tax benefits, yet those figures increasingly struggle to break through.
“You can’t change how people think until you change how they feel,” Rizer said.
Waitkunas argues that developers need to begin community engagement much earlier and give residents a meaningful role in shaping Community Benefit Agreements. Those agreements should go beyond financial contributions to schools, parks or community programs and include operating commitments involving issues such as noise, traffic and other local impacts.
Rizer agreed that simply complying with regulations no longer demonstrates partnership.
“When the noise ordinance says 55 and they come in at 54.5, that to me, that’s not partnership.”
The guests also discuss industry “unforced errors,” perceptions of secrecy surrounding anonymous LLCs and project filings, the growing influence of organized opposition groups, and the risk of companies waiting until a moratorium is already underway before attempting serious community outreach.
For Rizer, developers increasingly need to manage two distinct measures of success.
“Economic success and community trust are two different balance sheets,” he said. “Industry has to invest in both.”
The conversation also explores the role of local governments, particularly smaller communities encountering hyperscale development for the first time; the value of bringing officials and residents through operating facilities that resemble what is actually being proposed; and whether the data center industry ultimately needs a formal standard for community engagement.
Both guests expect conditions to become more difficult before they improve.
Waitkunas anticipates more moratoriums without significant changes in industry behavior, while Rizer warned that data centers could increasingly become central issues in local political campaigns.
“AI hasn’t really created this conversation,” Rizer said, “but it definitely has put it on fast forward.”
The central question for the industry is increasingly straightforward: not whether data centers have impacts, but whether developers can understand those impacts, mitigate them, communicate them honestly and build enough community trust to sustain the infrastructure expansion now underway.
