Community opposition to data centres, an executive at BDx Data Centers argues, has less to do with the facilities themselves than with the confusion and misinformation that surrounds them.
Mayank Srivastava, chief executive of BDx Data Centers, made the case recently that much of the public anxiety over data centre construction stems from a fundamental lack of clarity — both in how these projects are communicated to residents and in the regulatory frameworks that govern them. Where rules are vague or absent, he suggested, mistrust tends to fill the void.
Srivastava was direct about one of the central grievances that tends to animate local opposition: the question of who pays for the additional infrastructure that large-scale data centres require. His position was unambiguous — any business that demands extra resources from the grid or from municipal systems ought to bear those costs directly, rather than spreading them across the broader community of ratepayers and taxpayers who derive no direct benefit from the facility.
Noise, Costs, and the Misinformation Problem
On the question of noise — another frequent source of neighbourhood concern — Srivastava pushed back against what he characterized as an inflated perception of the problem. Under normal operating conditions, he said, data centres are quiet facilities, and the dramatic imagery of industrial-scale disruption that sometimes accompanies public debate does not reflect the day-to-day reality of how these buildings function once construction is complete.
The distinction between the construction phase and the operational phase matters considerably here. Construction can be disruptive, as it is with any large infrastructure project, but the argument Srivastava advances is that communities should not conflate that temporary disruption with what a finished data centre actually looks and sounds like as a neighbour.
The broader implication of his remarks is that the data centre industry has a communication problem as much as a regulatory one — that operators have not done enough to engage with communities early, honestly, and in plain language about what these facilities are, what they cost the public, and what they do not.
A Regulatory Gap With Real Consequences
The call for clearer rules reflects a tension that has become increasingly visible across North America, including in Canada, where data centre development has accelerated alongside growing demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and digital storage. Municipalities from British Columbia to Ontario have found themselves navigating land-use decisions, energy consumption concerns, and water usage questions without consistent provincial or federal guidance to draw on.
In that context, Srivastava’s argument for regulatory clarity is not merely a plea for industry convenience — it is a recognition that ambiguity tends to produce worse outcomes for everyone involved. When the rules are unclear, approvals become protracted, community opposition hardens, and the costs of uncertainty get passed along in ways that are rarely transparent.
The principle he articulates — that those who benefit from infrastructure should pay for it, rather than offloading costs onto the public — aligns with a broader logic of accountability that applies well beyond the data centre sector. It is a principle that regulators, at every level of government, would do well to encode clearly into the frameworks that govern how these facilities are sited, built, and connected to public systems.
