hckrnws
New Jersey fines data center $1.1M after drone pics expose 62 gas generators
by voxadam
by voxadam
These poor data center operators do really need a hand up after all. Incredible. Of all of the things your municipality could use its development funds on, this would not make my shortlist.
Does this technology even exist? The lies are getting more brazen.
They make sort of whine/squeal noise when operating. Not sure of the dB level.
San Jose Ice Rink has had a bunch of these installed out back for about 10 years I think.
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I think this is inaccurately called a fine when it sounds like a retroactively applied permit fee to operate.
This sounds like a euphemism for "bribe." And if you replace "fee" with "expense" you get a hum-dinger of an acronym.
Reeks of "someone comb over their papers and fine them so it looks like we care"
> According to the NYT, the “tractor-trailer-size” generators were “impossible to miss” and certainly were not there when inspectors last visited in December 2025.
Just how lax is NJ's regulation, for violations to be noticed from space, after a billion-dollar construction project received no inspections for 9 months?
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Compared to an open hearth steam engine burning coal, coal plants are also remarkably low emission hah
Notably, when in India I personally never really experienced corruption directly. It never came up, oddly. I’ve seen it first hand in the US a lot.
I described US corruption as more systematized in this exact way.
Most commercial development requires permits. Permits require plan approvals. Plan approvals always require some kind of sop to the politicians/cities vested interests - pay for a park, or donate money to specific causes, or carve out some specific amount of ‘affordable housing’ their buddy administers, etc.
Don’t do that, city generally won’t approve it.
Is that a bribe? Corruption? Or just good governance?
Most residential stuff bypasses this kind of thing for 99% of use cases, so individuals rarely see it.
In India, you’ll just find impossible to navigate paperwork mazes and near impossible permitting standards, but enforcement which magically disappears if you’re friends with the right person, in the right ethnic group, or a cash payment to the right person happens.
Which actually really isn’t that different, is it?
Just more out in the open and with more lawyers involved in the US, I guess.
In Chicago, someone would likely be threatened by their garbage man and have to ‘lose’ a bunch of cash in the trash the next pickup.
Because it's the gateway to more pernicious forms of media manipulation.
That's how a lot of the worse municipalities roll in my state that is very politically similar.
Also, 9mo ago data centers weren't boogeymen the government wanted to flamboyantly turn the screws on make a "look we're serving your interests" show for the peasants.
If NJ's inspectors are honest, competent, and numerous enough to actually do the job, then would cheap drones be good enough to provide quick "big picture" views?
Public inspectors can't do right.
Maybe it is also fair to ask, did the developer/operator try to get away with something there? Do and hope for forgiveness instead of asking permission?
(and the "fine" is laughable, especially since retrospective permit is rather likely; in fact the fine might not even be higher than the cost of any project delay from requesting the generators at planning approval stage...)