The data center pushback has awakened a NIMBY giant in my county
I live in Spartanburg County, SC. It's nothing special, just your average cheap Sunbelt county with lots of jobs and cheap land and thus lots of development as well.
For years I have said that, although we're not as urban and groovy as Greenville County next door, at least we're not NIMBYs like them! Greenville County always had fireworks at their county council meetings where the NIMBYs opposed every proposed subdivision. It wasn't that way here in Spartanburg County.
I recall reading through the county council minutes in amazement. Entire large subdivisions (think hundreds of homes) being approved with nary a public comment in opposition. We always had NIMBYs, but they were mostly content with screaming into the Facebook echo chamber and not coming to council meetings.
But then came along data centers. For whatever combination of reasons, this is exactly what the local NIMBYs needed to get off their couch, stop screaming into Facebook, and start screaming at county council meetings. (Like seriously, the council actually had cops on hand to escort out geriatric hecklers when needed.)
I keep hoping that now that they've defeated the local data center proposal, they'll go back home and chill, but unfortunately, they appear primed to win seats in our upcoming primaries. I'm now anticipating that the data center snowball will roll into years of NIMBY ascendency in our local politics.
Anybody else got this going on in your town/county/area?