Over the past year, the public conversation about data centers has soured. In county commission meetings and statehouse hearings, the facilities that run America’s digital economy are increasingly cast as threats to electricity bills, local water supplies and quiet rural life. That framing has consequences. Zoning boards and legislators are slowing approvals and writing restrictive new rules, even though the facts show data centers behave as economic engines for the communities that host them.
Amazon’s latest commitment cuts against the gloom. The company announced a new data center campus in Montgomery County, Missouri, backed by $10 billion in private capital that will flow into construction, infrastructure improvements and the local tax base. The build is expected to put thousands of construction workers on the job, and once operational, the campus will employ more than 400 full-time technicians and operators. Furthermore, the company is pairing the investment with over $7 million in community contributions.
That sits on top of an existing footprint: Amazon has called Missouri home since 2017, already employs more than 10,000 people across the state, supports roughly 10,000 additional jobs in industries like construction, logistics and professional services, and has added more than $9 billion to Missouri’s GDP since 2010.
The buildout that powers AI rests on physical infrastructure, and that infrastructure rests on skilled American labor. Constructing a hyperscale campus takes electricians, pipefitters, welders and fiber technicians, and operating one sustains a permanent technical workforce long after the cranes leave. NetChoice has documented that unions are among the strongest backers of data center construction, that entry-level technician roles average over $100,000 a year without requiring a college degree and that more than one million Americans now work in the industry. Amazon’s Montgomery County jobs fit that pattern exactly.
The benefits reach well past the payroll. Data centers tend to be reliable corporate citizens that strengthen the budgets of the towns that host them, paying local property taxes that fund schools, repair roads and bolster emergency services while easing the burden on everyday homeowners. Montgomery County estimates the Amazon campus will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new property tax revenue over the next 25 years. Amazon also committed $3 million to support local emergency dispatch services and more than $1 million for a new community gathering space at the county fairgrounds.
Amazon addressed concerns about electricity costs head-on. Working with the local utility, Ameren Missouri, the company agreed to pay the full cost of electric service for the campus, including the connection to the grid, with no rate discounts or incentives. In plain terms, the data center is footing its own energy bill rather than shifting it onto neighboring ratepayers.
Amazon has also addressed water use concerns. Amazon reported that its global data center operations used just 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour in 2025, more than seven times more efficient than the industry average of 0.84. It reaches that mark by relying on outside-air cooling for most of the year and turning to evaporative cooling only when temperatures climb, drawing on reclaimed water rather than drinking water wherever it can. The global data center industry as a whole accounts for less than half a percent of industrial water use worldwide. In Missouri, Amazon went a step further by partnering with an agricultural technology firm to help local farmers trim unnecessary irrigation, a project expected to conserve roughly 100 million gallons of water a year in the surrounding watershed.
None of this requires new mandates or fees. It requires policymakers to stop treating data centers as a problem to be managed and start recognizing them as the community investment they are. Amazon’s Missouri campus reads as a template: high-paying trades work, real money for schools and first responders, full protection for other ratepayers and water use that beats the field. When communities welcome data centers on these terms, American workers, local budgets and the nation’s technological edge all come out ahead.
Image via Unsplash.