When I read the headline of Robert Comeau’s guest column “Holyoke should embrace data center” [Gazette, June 20], the first place I looked on the page was to the byline at the bottom of the column. Sure enough, the author of “Holyoke should embrace data center” does not live in Holyoke.
It’s easy to argue that someone else’s community should be the one to deal with the enormous costs of an extractive and disruptive industry. It’s easy to say that because another city was, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a highly polluted manufacturing center it should simply resign itself to that identity and be denied the opportunity to change or grow.
After construction, data centers produce almost no jobs — indeed, so-called “artificial intelligence” eliminates more jobs than it creates. Data centers have wildly burdensome local costs in terms of power, water, noise, waste, and heat generation. They drive up utility expenses for those who live near them while simultaneously driving down their quality of life. They lock up parcels that could otherwise be developed for more neighborhood-serving, community-building purposes — housing, parks, retail, service organizations, restaurants, schools, even actual job-creating industry.
Area residents should respect the will of the people of Holyoke and their elected officials who specifically decided that such a use is not, in fact, appropriate for their community.
Matteo Pangallo
Shutesbury