DATA CENTERS: Say no to local construction

After reading that Avista is considering putting a data center in our town, I have to say a bit about the reality of them. These are massive industrial facilities that typically are a half million to several million square feet, the size of anywhere from eight to 40 football fields. They are ugly, featureless buildings with no windows, razor wires, concrete barriers that house tens of thousands of specialized processors (GPUs and TPUs), packed into dense racks. Each rack draws more power than an average American home, and there are thousands of racks. These buildings can use more electricity than entire towns. That’s just for computing load.

Cooling that many electrons requires massive amounts of water. Sometimes, millions of gallons per day are drawn from local aquifers, rivers and municipal supplies. Water that could have gone to grow food or gone to your faucet. Instead it’s gone into steam to keep the machines from melting. A facility that uses a city’s worth of electricity and millions of gallons of water may only employ 30 to 100 people, a handful of highly skilled technicians and security guards, not exactly a job boom.  

The data center buildout is the same playbook — target communities, fast permits, outside money, same promises (High paying jobs! Thirty of them in a facility the size of 40 football fields). In the end, your aquifer drained, your grid maxed out, your property values cratered, your children’s health sacrificed. These are just a few of the downsides and dangers of them. Say NO to data centers in our town.

ANNE SEDGWICK

Coeur d’Alene