Halt the Harm Network - Another Incredible Resource

Good morning everyone!  We hope that you all had a stunning weekend!

We wanted to share another great resource for those of you wanting additional information and community: Halt the Harm Network.  This organization covers a number of issues, including data centers.  This week, their newsletter centered on the confluence of crises around fracking and hyperscale campus developments: "A new paper by Dr. Austin Zwick at Syracuse University argues that the communities facing data center development can learn from those successes [re: fracking projects] and implement the same strategies to get ahead and protect themselves." 

Without further ado: Something Wired This Way Comes: What Fracking Taught Planners That Data Center Communities Need to Learn. 

ABSTRACT: Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers impose the same externalities on local communities that hydraulic fracturing did a decade ago: massive water consumption, continuous noise, construction road damage, thin permanent employment, and fiscal mismatches that leave municipalities bearing infrastructure costs while states capture revenue through tax abatements. Drawing on field work with municipal planners across five Marcellus Shale states, I argue in this Viewpoint that planners should treat data centers as heavy industrial uses and apply the targeted regulatory tools that fracking communities developed through hard experience. Outright bans invite state preemption; targeted regulation has proved durable. The analogy has limits, but the governance playbook transfers.  (Austin Zwick (24 Aug 2026): Something Wired This Way Comes: What Fracking Taught Planners That Data Center Communities Need to Learn, Journal of the American Planning Association, DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2026.2710901)

Stay informed.  Stay engaged.  Most importantly, stay hopeful!