Communities living beside the world’s expanding data-centre industry are reporting contaminated reclaimed water, continuous industrial noise, pressure on electricity systems and rising infrastructure costs. Scotland is still deciding how much of the same development it is prepared to accept.
The cloud has acquired plumbing, cooling towers, substations, generators and an electricity bill of industrial proportions.
Across several countries, communities are discovering the physical consequences of infrastructure usually described in weightless language. Residents have complained of mechanical noise continuing through the night. Public authorities have asked schools and offices to reduce electricity use as costs rise. Manufacturers have faced severe increases in power charges. A contractor working on a Meta data-centre development contaminated part of a municipal reclaimed-water system with a rare bacterium.
Reports that bees have also been harmed require further investigation. No reliable public evidence examined by Modern Scot has yet established that a named data centre caused a particular bee die-off. It remains entirely possible for the construction and operation of a large industrial campus to harm bees through habitat destruction, chemical exposure, polluted water, dust, artificial light and other recognised environmental pathways.
Scotland should examine what has happened elsewhere before individual planning decisions accumulate into a national industrial policy that no government has openly chosen.
Contaminated reclaimed water in Wyoming
In Cheyenne, Wyoming, a contractor working on Meta’s data-centre campus discharged water used to flush cooling-system pipes into the municipal wastewater network.
The discharge was linked to Cupriavidus gilardii, a rare bacterium capable of causing serious infection, particularly among people with weakened immune systems. Cheyenne’s Board of Public Utilities treated the incident as serious noncompliance, stopped the discharge and changed its rules governing wastewater from data centres.
The contamination did not enter Cheyenne’s drinking-water supply. It affected reclaimed water used for irrigation, and no community outbreak has been established. Those distinctions matter. They do not make the incident negligible.
Reclaimed-water operations were disrupted and disinfection was required. Officials decided that wastewater from the flushing of data-centre cooling systems should no longer be accepted through the ordinary municipal sewer.
The episode exposed a weakness in the language surrounding closed-loop cooling. A system may operate largely within a sealed circuit once commissioned while still producing wastewater during construction, flushing, maintenance, chemical treatment or decommissioning.
Municipal wastewater plants are designed around expected domestic and industrial waste. They may not be equipped to identify or remove every bacterium, glycol, corrosion inhibitor, metal or biocide released from a newly installed industrial cooling system.
For Scotland, the lesson is not that every data centre will contaminate water. It is that planning applications must disclose every expected discharge, including temporary construction and commissioning water, rather than discussing only routine operation after the facility opens.
A promise that a cooling system is closed should not end the questioning. It should begin it.
The noise that does not stop
Residents living near data centres in several American communities have described a continuous mechanical hum that remains audible through the night.
Potential sources include cooling fans, chillers, pumps, transformers, electrical equipment and backup generators. Unlike road traffic or construction, much of the machinery must continue operating because servers require tightly controlled temperatures.
Microsoft is facing a class-action lawsuit concerning alleged noise and light disturbance from its Fairwater data centre in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. Residents allege that a pervasive low hum has interfered with sleep and the use of their homes. Microsoft maintains that the facility complies with local rules and says it has introduced sound-reduction measures. The allegations have not been determined by a court.
A widely circulated claim of a constant 64-decibel exposure has not been tied to a sufficiently reliable primary measurement showing where, when and how it was recorded. It should not be presented as settled fact.
A decibel number alone is rarely enough. A proper assessment requires the duration, time of day, distance from the equipment, measurement weighting, previous background level and the presence of tonal or low-frequency sound.
A repetitive low hum can be more disruptive than a similar average level produced by ordinary traffic. Low-frequency noise may also penetrate buildings and be experienced as pressure or vibration. A facility can satisfy a broad daytime limit while continuing to disturb nearby households at night.
Scottish planning authorities should require independent baseline measurements before construction, separate daytime and night-time limits, tonal penalties, low-frequency analysis and continuous monitoring at the nearest homes after operation begins.
The developer should not be permitted to commission the only decisive test of the disturbance created by its own machinery.
Schools and public offices asked to conserve electricity
In Henrico County, Virginia, public employees, including school staff, were asked to reduce unnecessary electricity consumption after the authority was warned that rates for government buildings and schools would rise by 24.9 per cent from 1 July.
Employees were advised to switch off lights in empty rooms, shut down computers, close blinds and unplug equipment that was not being used. The county expected the rate increase to add around $5 million to its annual electricity costs. Henrico has 37 operating data centres and further developments planned.
It would be inaccurate to claim that those centres alone caused the entire increase. Electricity prices are affected by fuel, generation, transmission, maintenance, weather and regulatory decisions as well as demand from new industrial users.
The public symbolism remains difficult to overlook. Schools and local services were being asked to search for savings while enormous new commercial electricity loads continued to enter the regional system.
This is the bargain Scotland must examine before it is made. When a hyperscale facility requests hundreds of megawatts, does the developer finance the generation and grid reinforcement needed to serve it, or does the existing public system expand around it?
A data centre may be privately owned. The substations, transmission lines, reserve generation and balancing services required to supply it can nevertheless produce costs for everyone else.
Electricity costs in America’s largest grid region
The clearest evidence of energy-cost disruption is emerging from the PJM Interconnection, the electricity market covering all or part of 13 American states and the District of Columbia.
Rapid data-centre expansion has contributed to expectations of sharply rising demand while new generation and transmission projects remain delayed. Manufacturers in affected regions have reported substantial increases in capacity charges.
Reuters found that an Ohio brick manufacturer’s monthly capacity charge had risen from approximately $1,600 to $12,000, while its total electricity costs increased by around 90 per cent. The experience cannot be applied to every household or company, but it demonstrates what can occur when large new demand is added to a constrained system and the resulting costs are distributed across other users.
During a July heatwave, PJM paid as much as $28,000 per megawatt during short periods to keep the system balanced. Heat, air-conditioning demand, unavailable generation, transmission constraints and growing industrial loads all contributed.
Data centres do not inevitably make every electricity bill rise. One recent US working paper found that historical data-centre growth between 2015 and 2024 may modestly have reduced average retail rates by spreading fixed costs across a larger volume of electricity sales. Its authors also warned that future supply constraints could reverse that effect.
The central issue is therefore not simply how much electricity a facility consumes. It is whether the grid has spare capacity, how quickly new generation can be built and who pays for the infrastructure required.
Oregon has begun answering that question directly. Its POWER Act requires very large users to bear a greater share of the costs they impose on the system. In July, regulators approved a substantial increase in electricity rates for large industrial consumers served by Portland General Electric while slightly reducing residential rates.
Rising household costs are not merely a law of physics. They are also the consequence of regulatory choices about who pays.
Scotland should settle that question before large connections are granted, not after household bills have absorbed the answer.
Ireland’s national warning
Ireland offers the closest comparison for Scotland: a relatively small country that pursued technology investment before fully confronting the cumulative effect on its electricity system.
Data centres accounted for 23 per cent of Ireland’s metered electricity consumption in 2025, compared with 28 per cent consumed by all homes. Their use had increased sharply over the previous decade.
The concentration became large enough to alter national energy planning and connection policy. Restrictions were introduced around new connections in the Dublin region, and large prospective users have faced stronger requirements concerning generation and renewable supply.
Campaign groups have estimated that data-centre expansion added hundreds of millions of euros to household electricity costs between 2015 and 2023. That is an advocacy estimate rather than an official audited total and should be treated accordingly. The official consumption figures alone show the scale of the policy problem.
Ireland did not reach nearly a quarter of national metered electricity use through one openly debated decision. The outcome developed through a succession of projects, each of which could be presented as manageable when considered alone.
Scotland is at risk of repeating that sequence.
Backup power brings noise, smoke and emissions
Data centres require an exceptionally reliable electricity supply. When the grid fails or becomes strained, facilities may use batteries, diesel generators or dedicated gas generation.
Backup generators must be tested regularly. Their operation can produce noise, nitrogen oxides, fine particulates and carbon emissions close to surrounding communities.
The rapid growth of AI demand is also encouraging proposals for new gas-fired generation. Some technology companies and utilities argue that gas can provide dependable electricity while renewable and grid projects are built. Environmental groups warn that this risks locking in new fossil-fuel infrastructure for facilities advertised as part of a cleaner digital economy.
Recent research examining more than 400 hyperscale facilities in the United States estimated that their electricity demand remained heavily dependent upon fossil-fuel generation and produced a carbon intensity above the national grid average.
A Scottish planning application should therefore disclose more than the renewable-energy contract attached to ordinary operation. It should identify the size, fuel, operating limits, testing schedule and expected emissions of every backup or dedicated generating unit.
A centre cannot be judged solely by the electricity it claims to buy when conditions are favourable. It must also be judged by what it burns when they are not.
Could data centres harm bees?
Modern Scot has not found a verified chain of evidence proving that a named data centre caused a reported bee die-off.
It would nevertheless be wrong to conclude that such harm is impossible. Data centres are large industrial developments. They can affect bees and other pollinators through several established environmental routes.
Habitat loss
Construction may remove grassland, hedgerows, flowering plants, woodland edges and undisturbed ground used for feeding or nesting.
Many wild bee species nest in soil, banks, hollow stems and dead wood. Ground clearance and excavation can destroy colonies directly. Even a relatively small loss of flower-rich habitat can matter where it breaks the connection between seasonal food sources.
Pesticides, herbicides and biocides
Industrial campuses may use herbicides around fences, substations and roads, or insecticides to control ants, mosquitoes, wasps and other insects.
Bees can be exposed through direct contact, contaminated dust, nectar, pollen and water. Some chemicals kill quickly. Others can impair navigation, immunity, reproduction and foraging at lower concentrations.
Any investigation into a bee loss near a data centre would need a complete record of chemicals used by the operator and every contractor.
Water contamination
Bees collect water to cool their colonies, dilute food and feed larvae. They may drink from puddles, drainage channels, irrigation systems, retention ponds and other shallow sources.
Construction runoff or wastewater containing glycol, salts, metals, biocides, bacteria or other contaminants could expose nearby insects. The Wyoming incident proves that unexpected contamination can occur during the commissioning of cooling equipment, although it does not establish that bees were affected there.
A credible investigation would require testing dead bees, hive material, water, soil and nearby vegetation. Proximity alone would not establish causation.
Dust and combustion pollution
Earthworks, concrete cutting, traffic and generator use can release dust and particulates that settle on flowers and water.
Air pollution can harm insects directly and may also degrade the floral scents bees use to locate food. The effect would depend upon the pollutants, concentrations, exposure period and distance from the site.
Artificial light
Large campuses may use security, perimeter and road lighting throughout the night.
Artificial light is an established ecological disturbance. It changes insect movement, feeding and predator relationships and can alter interactions between nocturnal pollinators and plants. Honeybees are principally active by day, but many other pollinating insects operate at dusk or overnight.
Heat, drainage and water demand
Large roofs, roads and paved surfaces can alter drainage and create local heat-island effects. Cooling systems may reject heat, while substantial water withdrawals can affect nearby streams, wetlands or groundwater.
Changes in temperature and soil moisture can shorten flowering periods or reduce the availability of forage during dry weather.
Noise and vibration
Bees use vibration to communicate within the colony. Heavy construction, piling and machinery could plausibly disturb hives close to a development.
Evidence that ordinary operational data-centre noise causes population-level bee decline remains insufficient. This should be treated as a legitimate subject for measurement, not presented as a proven explanation.
The responsible conclusion is that a data centre could harm bees through habitat destruction, chemicals, contaminated water, pollution, artificial light, heat and possibly vibration. None of those mechanisms proves that a particular centre caused a particular death event.
Where bee losses are reported, independent environmental testing is required. Corporate reassurance is not evidence. Neither is immediate certainty from opponents.
The public purpose is rarely defined
Data centres support services used throughout modern life: banking, medical records, communications, government systems, websites, email, cloud storage and emergency infrastructure.
That does not mean every proposed centre has equal public value.
A facility supporting hospital records is not the same proposition as a vast campus intended to train commercial AI systems, optimise advertising or provide speculative future computing capacity. Both may be called data centres, but the common label obscures the difference.
The public is rarely told what activity will take place inside, whose data will be processed, what proportion of the capacity will serve AI, how many permanent jobs will remain, what tax advantages will be received or whether the electricity could support another form of industry.
These buildings may also support systems of identification, behavioural analysis, surveillance and automated decision-making. Describing them as digital jails is a political judgement, but the concern beneath the phrase is legitimate. Computing infrastructure is not neutral merely because its machinery is hidden behind blank walls.
The question is not whether Scotland should eliminate every server room. It is whether multinational companies should receive priority access to Scottish electricity, water, land and public infrastructure without proving a commensurate public return.
Scotland is still in time to ask
The First Minister has said the Scottish Government is considering national planning guidance for hyperscale data centres while applications are already progressing through local authorities.
Scotland should not allow every council to assess a large electricity demand as though no other application existed. The cumulative national requirement must be understood before a succession of individual approvals commits the country’s future capacity.
Every hyperscale application should disclose expected and maximum electricity demand, annual and peak water use, all wastewater, backup generation, continuous and low-frequency noise, exterior lighting, chemical use, permanent employment, tax support and the full cost of grid reinforcement.
Independent monitoring should begin before construction so later changes in noise, water, air quality and ecology can be measured against a genuine baseline.
Developers should also be required to finance bonds covering contamination, abandonment and restoration. A proposed wildflower meadow beside a fenced industrial campus is no substitute for legal and financial liability.
The international evidence does not establish that every data centre will poison water, kill bees or double electricity bills. It establishes something more useful: these developments can produce identifiable environmental and economic harms, and several forms of disruption have already appeared in communities told that the facilities could readily be accommodated.
Scotland is being offered the same bargain before its complete terms have been disclosed.
The cloud is not floating above us. It is arriving as an industrial estate, asking for a substation, a water supply, reserve generation and a permanent place in the landscape.
Before Scotland provides them, the public is entitled to know what, precisely, it receives in return.
Sources
Reuters — White House and technology companies address the risk of AI infrastructure costs being passed to consumers
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/white-house-rally-utilities-data-centers-over-ai-power-costs-2026-07-13/
Associated Press — Gas generation, AI demand and clean-energy requirements
https://apnews.com/article/7995717f506914fc181a07d32d1867a5
Associated Press — Federal grid rules for large data-centre connections
https://apnews.com/article/506e3d206871111f15c3c62fc5368be5
Business Insider — Meta contractor and contamination of Cheyenne reclaimed water
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-data-center-waste-water-bacterium-cheyenne-wyoming-2026-7
The Guardian — Cheyenne wastewater controls following the Meta data-centre incident
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/08/meta-datacenter-ai-wyoming-water
Windows Central — Fairwater data-centre noise lawsuit
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-hit-with-class-action-lawsuit-over-unreasonable-and-excessive-noise-from-datacenter
TechRadar — Fairwater noise and light-pollution allegations
https://www.techradar.com/pro/the-worlds-most-powerful-ai-data-center-hit-with-massive-class-action-lawsuit-wisconsin-residents-allege-noise-and-extreme-light-pollution-at-usd7-3-billion-microsoft-mega-facility
TechRadar — Henrico County electricity conservation measures
https://www.techradar.com/pro/virginia-county-tells-schools-businesses-to-conserve-electricity-as-ai-data-center-demand-hits-grid-raises-energy-prices
Tom’s Hardware — Henrico County schools and public offices asked to reduce electricity use
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/virginia-county-asks-all-employees-including-schools-to-save-power-due-to-ai-driven-electricity-price-hikes-states-400-plus-data-centers-steadily-increasing-demand-grid-expansion-and-pricing
Tom’s Hardware — Oregon cost allocation for very large electricity users
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/power-company-hikes-data-center-bills-by-30-percent-cuts-residential-electricity-costs-by-1-3-percent-oregon-approves-change-through-power-act-pushes-developments-using-more-than-20-megawatts-of-power-to-pay-their-fair-share
The Irish Sun — Ireland’s 2025 data-centre electricity figures and campaign cost estimates
https://www.thesun.ie/money/17258912/data-centre-electricity-consumption-ireland/
Watten, Bistline and Blanford — Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence from the United States
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777
Guidi and others — Assessing the Carbon Emissions and Energy Consumption of US Hyperscale Data Centers
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05420
International Energy Agency — Energy and AI
https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai
Scottish Parliament — Hyperscale data centres, 25 June 2026
https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/official-report/search-what-was-said-in-parliament/meeting-of-parliament-25-06-2026?iob=224099&meeting=20188
National Energy System Operator — Data-centre demand and Scotland
https://www.neso.energy/growing-energy-demand-scotland-could-help-lower-long-term-bills-says-neso-chief-executive
European Food Safety Authority — Risks to bees from pesticide exposure
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/180228
UK Government — National Pollinator Strategy and supporting evidence
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-pollinator-strategy-for-bees-and-other-pollinators-in-england
World Health Organization — Environmental noise guidance
https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/9789289053563
