Giga datacenters plopped down in unincorporated areas and small towns will bribe local officials, suck up all the water, raise local electricity rates, pollute the air with on-site natural gas generators, and given the opportunity, play Russian roulette with SMRs.
Actually, these datacenters are much, much worse in different ways if you'd consider they are much bigger, louder, and resource-intensive. While hypermarts put local business out of business and take up comparatively less land including parking lots (while still being huge), their effects are bad but in different ways, especially given they abuse low wage workers who require government subsidies (indirect corporate welfare) and when they leave suddenly they create food deserts.
I was thinking more of how Wallmart also has a history of 'influencing' local officials to overlook the damage being done, as well as getting small towns to take on huge debt loads for 'required' infrastructure upgrades, all in the hopes that there will be a windfall when they set up shop. But sure, they suck in other ways and if you need some relative shittyness metric then ok I guess.
