A new kind of community fight is taking root across the Mid-Atlantic region. Communities are organizing, zoning boards are pausing approvals, and legislators from Trenton to Richmond are racing to get ahead of a data center buildout that feels like it arrived overnight.

The frustration of residents in many of these communities is real. And in many cases, people are raising valid concerns. So the results of a new poll this week showing a majority of New Jersey residents don’t want these projects in their towns should surprise no one.

When a facility is proposed without meaningful community engagement — sited near aquifers, approved through zoning maneuvers that residents discover only after the fact, powered by on-site gas generators that run around the clock — that is a failure. Communities have every right to demand transparency, environmental accountability, and a genuine answer to the question: What’s in this for us?

But there is a difference between demanding better and demanding nothing at all.

Data centers aren’t optional infrastructure

Here is what gets lost in the reaction: data centers are not optional infrastructure. They are the physical backbone of the modern economy, storing medical records, processing financial transactions, supporting emergency communications, and powering the artificial intelligence tools reshaping every industry.

The Mid-Atlantic sits at the center of this buildout because of its fiber infrastructure, its proximity to population centers, and its position within the PJM Interconnection grid serving more than 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. That demand is not going away because a county rezones. It simply moves somewhere else and takes the economic opportunity with it.

That opportunity is real. According to the Maryland Tech Council, a typical 800,000-square-foot data center generates approximately 5,000 construction jobs and $775 million in economic activity. In Loudoun County, Virginia, data centers now account for roughly 35 to 40 percent of the county’s general fund revenue. These are not abstract numbers. They represent roads paved, schools funded, and property taxes stabilized.

The energy cost concern is legitimate and deserves a direct answer. Independent analysis of the PJM grid found that data center demand accounted for roughly $9.3 billion in capacity cost increases, costs ultimately passed to ratepayers in states like New Jersey. That is not acceptable, and new regulatory frameworks requiring facilities to bring their own power generation and bear their own grid costs are the right response.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore put it plainly: the choice is not between letting Big Tech do whatever it wants or blocking all development. There is a third path: higher standards, not a closed door.

This is where I’ll speak plainly as someone who represents the union carpenters and contractors who build these structures. There is a version of data center development that delivers very little to working families: out-of-state labor, poverty-level construction wages, and a facility that employs a handful of technicians once operational. That version deserves every bit of skepticism it receives.

But there is another version.

When data centers are built with union labor — through agreements that require local hiring, wage standards, and apprenticeship utilization — the construction phase alone generates thousands of middle-class jobs that stay in the community.

Skilled union carpenters can handle up to 70 percent of the work on a data center site, working in close coordination with other trades to reduce rework, prevent costly change orders, and keep complex projects on schedule. The Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters represents more than 42,000 trained professionals across Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia. This provides a portable, scalable workforce drawn from the communities where these facilities are being built.

The answer isn’t no — it’s higher standards

The answer to legitimate community concerns is not a moratorium. It is a mandate for responsible siting, genuine public engagement, clean energy sourcing, and union-built construction standards. Pair that with project labor agreements and local hire requirements, and the equation changes entirely. The community gets good jobs, the developer gets a reliable and skilled workforce, and the facility gets built to last.

The residents pushing back across in New Jersey and throughout the region are not wrong to ask hard questions. They deserve real answers. The answer should be higher standards, not a future built somewhere else.