Local residents near a Mexico data center built by Microsoft last year have been complaining of a range of negative utility and health effects that they're attributing to the data center itself, according to the New York Times. They've highlighted several incidents of water shortages, power outages, and even stomach bugs, with some local schools forced to close temporarily.
Though causation does not imply causality and the individual incidents are isolated and not necessarily linked, the reports of problems have escalated in the last year since the data center complex in Queretaro was opened. The NYT report cites Dulce María Nicolás, a resident and mother of two from the nearby town of Las Cenizas, who claims water outages have lasted weeks and led to school cancellations. Víctor Bárcenas, who runs a local health clinic, claims that because of power outages he attributes to the data centers, one of his patients couldn't be treated locally and had to be rushed to a hospital over an hour away.
