The absence of binding environmental siting rules for data centers means industry location choices function as de facto policy. Alberta's pattern — three-quarters of planned sites in high water stress areas — is not an anomaly but the predictable outcome of an infrastructure race unconstrained by water-use accounting. Ohio's municipal resistance has produced some wins and some losses, but in both cases the communities are doing the regulatory work that state and federal frameworks have not done. The buildout in water-stressed and grid-stressed zones will harden before any…