I think its likely possible to build a data center that a community would be okay with. It would mean making certain design choices:

• Closed loop water cycle - This would mean that only small fraction of water that is normally used by DCs is consumed. This technology is fully mature. The reason most companies don’t use it is, it is more expensive to run the DC this way.
• Large scale PV solar panel installation for the DC - While not a complete answer to power consumption question, it would provide a large offset during the hottest hours of the day when DC cooling is most needed mitigating the worst impacts to DC electricity consumption
• Waste heat reuse - In many parts of the world heat centrally created in a city and distrusted through pipes to other places that need heat. DCs are exceedingly good and producing heat, and it is largely wasted. If a community would know that their own heating bills would come down by using waste head from the DC, that would be an incentive.
• Sound mitigation - most of the sound comes from cooling fans. If waste heat reclamation is done properly or a water loop to a large body of water is available, then the noise could be significantly reduced or eliminated too.

All of these things are possible and if a DC builder did these things on an existing site, then used that as a showcase for what a new DC would be, I think it would be much better received. They can do all of these things. They don’t because its cheaper not to.

“I actually think it’s disingenuous for governors and elected officials who pontificate about workforce and hiring and economic development to then go and basically throw a grenade to the center of what is the new industrial revolution that literally powers almost every single business on earth,”

Except that this “revolution” is taking away more long-term jobs than it will create.