CA Soon May Have Over 300 Data Centers. Locals Worry About Water Supply Threats. |
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The new data center proposed for a quiet city about 115 miles east of San Diego came across people’s radars in different ways.
For patrons of the deli on West Aten Road, it was the white “Not In My Backyard” signs jutting out of lawns.
For local irrigation district workers, it was something called an “electric service application.”
For Margie Padilla, it was a rant on Facebook.
The 43-year-old mom came across a post online while she had a few minutes to scan social media last spring after a day spent tending her garden and taking care of her two boys.
Want to Resist a Data Center? These Organizers Share How They Did It.
“Somebody was complaining about this center,” Padilla said. “I was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’”
What’s going on is the second-largest new data center being considered statewide, which would be less than half a mile from Padilla’s stucco home in the center of Imperial Valley. If finished by 2028, as the developer expects, the at least 950,000-square-foot, two-story data center could be the largest operating statewide, taking up 17 football fields’ worth of land.
The roughly $10 billion, 330-megawatt data center would require 750,000 gallons of water a day to operate, said developer Sebastian Rucci, who insists electricity and water costs won’t rise due to the data center.
“We have studies on the air. We have studies on the water. The electricity could be handled,” Rucci said. “We did our homework.”
Imperial officials haven’t quelled local concerns, only noting that the project is facing litigation and that the center’s long-term impacts on utilities haven’t been determined.
On top of the financial burden of maintaining her family’s health, gas and grocery expenses strain Padilla’s budget and she’s worried a new data center will only increase water and power costs. Padilla, who first heard of the data center a year ago, has only grown more concerned and she’s not alone.
Some residents would see it from their backyards.
“I can only imagine the rates going up once that data center is up and running,” she said, shading her eyes from the beaming sun.
This is one of two dozen data centers expected to open in California in the next few years.
Growing Concern and Regulatory Gaps
A majority of respondents to a nationwide poll by the US Water Alliance share Padilla’s worries, with 54 percent extremely or very concerned about the effect data centers will have on water quality, water supply and costs in their area.
In its first question about data centers since the poll began in 2016, two-thirds of voters said it was important for their state to have a plan for the effects of data centers on water in the coming years.
“I suspect that as data centers continue to be part of the broad conversation, then these numbers will probably continue to go up as people are more concerned about the impacts they have on the things that affect them and their communities, like supply, quality and cost,” said Scott Berry, the senior advisor on policy and external affairs at the US Water Alliance, from Water Week in Washington D.C. this month.
More than 90 percent of data centers in the U.S. get most of the water they need for cooling from municipal systems, estimated Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
During the hottest summer days, a large 100-megawatt facility can use about 1 million gallons of water for evaporative cooling. That amount is the same as about 10,000 people’s daily water use at home, Ren said.
But those centers require “zero........