Amazon’s plans to build a data center campus near the Columbia River in Eastern Washington drew pushback Monday at a meeting of the Walla Walla County commissioners.
Some attendees held handmade and printed signs reading “Amazon lies,” “Big tech is shady. No more data centers” and “Water for life, not data,” according to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin and its photos of the event.
The majority of the roughly 56 public comments were opposed to or had concerns about data center development, including worries about groundwater supplies, effects on agriculture and wildlife, and a lack of transparency, the Union-Bulletin reported. Supporters pointed to potential benefits from job creation and economic development.
The meeting highlighted continued resistance to data centers from communities concerned about higher electricity bills, depleted freshwater supplies and other environmental and social repercussions. Over the past year, tech giants including Amazon and Microsoft have pledged to limit those impacts and invest in host communities, but those commitments have not ended the opposition.
Elected officials are increasingly considering legislation and local ordinances to set standards and require greater transparency — an approach some tech leaders say could help address public concerns.
“There is a role for good laws, and if laws emerge that require that everybody do this work in a responsible way, I think that might be part of the solution,” Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chair and president, recently told reporters at a company event.
Commissioners in Western Washington’s Skagit County last month adopted significant restrictions on data center development. The facilities are prohibited in unincorporated areas, with some exceptions, and new caps on size and electricity usage will limit the technology to small-scale operations.
Amazon’s data center expansion in Washington
The planned Walla Walla County campus is one of two projects that would mark Amazon’s first large-scale data center developments in its home state. The second is in West Richland, part of the Tri-Cities. Amazon already operates smaller data centers in Washington.
The Walla Walla County campus would occupy roughly 134 acres at Wallula Gap Business Park, on property formerly owned by the Port of Walla Walla. Its three proposed single-story data center buildings would create about 120 to 150 full-time jobs, Amazon said.
According to a company fact sheet, the campus would use roughly 14 million gallons of water from the public utility to cool its equipment during its first year of operation. Amazon says it is working with the port to build a system that would replace the utility-supplied cooling water with nonpotable water drawn from the Columbia River. Wastewater from the campus “will meet industrial reuse standards,” the company said.
The campus would also use about 6 million gallons of utility-supplied water annually for employee needs.
Amazon’s fact sheet says the company will cover the electricity costs associated with the data center and that the “expenses aren’t added to the bills of local residents or businesses.”
The company is also working with partners to develop a nuclear power plant using small modular nuclear reactors near the Tri-Cities. The proposed plant could begin operating in the 2030s and “will provide net-new carbon-free energy for communities in the Pacific Northwest, including Eastern Washington,” Amazon said.
Despite Amazon’s assurances, many attendees at Monday’s meeting called for a one-year, countywide moratorium on new data center development, the Union-Bulletin reported. Commissioner Bertha Clayton said she would consider a pause on new applications to give officials time to draft an ordinance to better regulate the developments.
Clayton said zoning changes adopted now would be unlikely to affect the current phase of Amazon’s project. The other two commissioners have previously said they do not support a moratorium, according to the Union-Bulletin.
The proposal is undergoing an environmental review under Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act, or SEPA. The review will assess potential environmental impacts and identify measures to address them. It will also determine whether the project requires a more detailed environmental impact statement.