||| BY MICHAEL RIORDAN as printed in THE SEATTLE TIMES |||
Artificial intelligence promises benefits, but its pernicious impacts must be anticipated and mitigated, else vast inequities and disruptions will result. State and local governments must act soon to mitigate these effects, especially in regulating the massive data centers that have blossomed in the Pacific Northwest and across the country to enable AI.
As underscored by a series of 2024 Seattle Times and ProPublica articles, one of the most harmful impacts is the voracious electrical consumption of the largest data centers, dubbed “hyperscalers.” These data centers are huge — the data center campus in Quincy, Grant County, sprawls over nearly 70 acres — and draw hundreds of megawatts of power.
Agricultural, commercial and residential customers of Grant County’s public utility have had to bear the onerous costs of out-of-state power sources in times of high demand due to existing utility commitments to these centers. And unless Olympia takes actions to prevent it, similar power demands from more of these gargantuan facilities will affect regular Washington electricity customers by raising their rates.
In addition to their ravenous appetites for electrons, these massive data centers also require Niagaras of water to cool the microchips and servers that can crunch gazillions of data bits to build AI tokens, models and agents. In The Dalles, Ore., for example, a gaggle of Google data centers consumes over 400 million gallons of water annually — about a third of the city’s entire water supply. In a drought year, as predicted to occur more often in the future, such a huge demand can starve other thirsty users. And when the center returns this warmed water to adjacent rivers, it threatens to elevate their already elevated temperatures, injuring or killing migrating salmon.
Citizens across the political spectrum are rising in fervid opposition to large data centers sprouting in their midst. This is especially true in the rural areas most impacted by the hyperscalers, which are too resource-intensive to go anywhere else.
Both Republican and Democratic voters, young and old, are ripe for revolution against Big Tech. On college campuses, the revolt has already begun.
And what has Olympia been doing about this looming challenge? Next to nothing. In fact, our lawmakers have long been granting data center builders and operators lucrative tax breaks to encourage them to build these facilities in our state. And some local officials, who have been figuratively salivating over the prospects of the high-tech jobs and property taxes that accompany the data centers, have been chiming in with tax breaks, too. The unfortunate losers are the electrical ratepayers statewide and local water customers, who will effectively be paying an “AI tax” in their monthly utility bills to help subsidize all this data-center construction.
At least in Seattle, Mayor Katie Wilson has announced a one-year moratorium on new large data centers in the city, and two companies that had previously expressed interest in building data centers in the area withdrew after massive public outcry.
In many ways, we greatly benefit from the data centers in our midst — which enable email, Zoom meetings, online banking and shopping, video streaming, plus the myriad digital benefits of modern life. But like electricity, the essential resources on which these activities rely cannot be left to the machinations of the marketplace, nor to their ultrawealthy purveyors. Digital railroads and stations must be regulated.
We must call upon our elected representatives in Olympia to awaken and reassess the proper relationship between these essential digital resources and their users. The best place to begin is with the explosive electricity and water consumption of the largest data centers now sprouting in Central Washington. These centers should at least be required by law to produce power that is renewable — or to mitigate the air and water pollution that will inevitably result if they cannot.
Michael Riordan: is a physicist and historian, author of “The Hunting of the Quark” and recipient of the 2025 Abraham Pais Prize for his scholarly works on the history of physics.
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The competitive rush to build these installations is understandable and their product is valuable far beyond the communities in they inhabit. Nevertheless, jobs (whose local economic benefit beyond wage/salary per worker is minimal due to loss of multiplier) and taxable properties (after inducements expire) are difficult things for state and local governments to deny as in many cases, pro statements are simpler and therefore more attractive than con statements.
The sponsors, in mutual competition, are understandably in a hurry. So their statements are short, punchy. Opposing statements are longer, more complicated, and make boring reading. It’s no contest in small communities needed jobs (from outside) and ultimate tax base.
And a question persists: what is the economic and technological life of these installations (once vacant, what is their tax assessment?), and what follows in their communities?
Thank you Michael. I commend the few politicians who have not yet been bought off by industry lobbyists and have made an effort to regulate large-scale AI data centers… please continue your efforts. There is so much information out there, and I believe the cons heavily outweigh the pros at this point in time.
I believe that the prospects of a short term jump in local employment and an increase in property taxes as a result of building new AI data centers V/S the resultant burden of increased electrical and water rates throughout areas already being served across the country, and the fact that doing so would be promoting an industry which is forecasted to put millions of workers out of jobs in the coming years, are just a few of the many good reasons, IMO, for not supporting either large-scale or hyper-scale data centers, or crypto currency mining operations.
It’s my perception that there is little to no funding for Software Systems that don’t consume significant AI resources. If you build a project and want funding. Then you have to build an AI-laden platform. So anyone who has a career in Software. Is either led to employ extensive AI. Or has to find a new career.
When I checked the WA State Public Disclosure records last year, I found a disturbing number of current office holders — including one I will not name in our 40th district — had accepted the maximum allowable donations from Amazon and Microsoft. And thanks for pointing out crypto mining operations, MJ, which also require lots of electricity and water to function. You’d think that Eastern WA, with plenty of both, would be an ideal place for them to locate, but there seem to be relatively few, as compared with other states like Georgia and Texas.
Good discussion, but I believe data centers are far more than artificial intelligent facilities. They store digital files … billions of emails and photographs, movie libraries, financial data, medical data, computer applications … the list is near endless. Guessing everything in the Orcasonian is stored at a data center.
There is ZERO chance digital information is going to be replaced by anything in the foreseeable future.
Maybe Musk and has Space-X will actually someday place data centers in orbit, power them by solar, and possibly make earth based data centers as obsolete as 1970 shopping malls. That an interesting concept, but un unproven idea and likely far into the future. It’s probably easier to replace a module that has gone bad on earth then is to send a repair team in a rocket into space, although it might possibly be a manned data center space station.
In the meanwhile, policy makers need to ensure new data centers pay for the power they use and reclaim the water used since I’m guessing that’s primarily used just for equipment cooling. That should be a political doable.
* As of 2015, the U.S. uses 117 trillion gallons of water a year (guessing it’s more now!), 87% of that is freshwater withdrawals, most for irrigation.
* Average American family uses 320 gallons per day, 30% for outdoor uses (e.g. watering the lawn).
* Agricultural irrigation in the United States uses approximately 118 billion gallons of water per day.
* Out of the 118 billion gallons of water used daily for U.S. ag irrigation, an estimated 20 billion to 25 billion gallons per day (roughly 17% to 20%) is exported overseas embedded within crops. A lot of it is alfalfa grown for fodder by * Saudi Arabia and China. Other transfers of large amounts of domestic water include exports of almonds, beef, and dairy.
* Amazon data centers used about 2.5 billion gallons globally in 2025.
Of course, none of this is sustainable in any way. The United States has depleted its underground water reserves by more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 cubic kilometers) since 1900. This massive volume is equivalent to draining twice the amount of water found in Lake Erie or filling the entire Grand Canyon about one-fourth of the way up. At current pumping rates, the most critical U.S. agricultural groundwater reserves are projected to become effectively exhausted or unusable in just 20 to 50 years.
For once I agree with Robert Dashiell. The central thrust of my essay is that the necessary data center regulation will HAVE to be done by state and local authorities. The White House has been captured by megabillionaire oligarchs who want to build hyperscale data centers in our midst, using scarce natural resources as cheaply as possible. Time to get moving, Olympia. A good place to start would be a moratorium on these facilities, which would send a clear message to the Other Washington.
Mr. Riordan is correct that the fight needs to be happening at the state level. Seattle’s moratorium, however well intentioned, will only have the effect of pushing development elsewhere. Seattle was already a challenging site for major data center expansion due to exorbitant land costs and a tighter regulatory environment. But ironically, cities are exactly where these things should be going, if they are to be built at all. Instead they’re getting dumped into some of the poorest and least populated counties across the West, where land costs are low and local opposition is unlikely to be well funded or well organized.
But the real tragedy of these monstrosities isn’t the land use, the water use, or the electricity use, it’s that they’re little more than machines for turning the merely wealthy into the stupendously rich. None of the major AI companies are profitable yet. They’re burning through trillions of dollars in the hope that they can sell you information which was already available to you for free, wrapped in a devious package that tricks your nervous system into believing that you’re having a conversation.
Apart from limited (and impressive) science and engineering applications, the vast majority of demand (and potential revenue) is expected to come from average consumers like anyone who’s reading this. Ask yourself if you’re part of the problem. Are you using ChatGPT to check the weather, plan a trip, or prepare a recipe? You’re using 10x the energy required for a traditional website or search engine and becoming more dependent with each query. Don’t let the slick convenience of conversational software lobotomize you. The evidence is already showing that users of these services suffer from reduced attention spans and diminished cognitive capacity.