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In central Washington, a farming town of roughly 8,100 people has become an unlikely showcase for America’s data-center boom.
Quincy, long known for potato fields, apple orchards and food-processing plants, has spent two decades attracting some of the world’s largest technology companies. Microsoft began building data centers there around 20 years ago, drawn by affordable land, the region’s cool climate and abundant hydropower from the Columbia River.
Now the town is becoming central to Microsoft’s response to a backlash against the facilities powering cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The company this year cited Quincy as proof that data centers can bring tangible benefits to the communities that host them, as residents elsewhere raise alarms over electricity prices, water use and limited local job creation.
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The economic gains are visible in Quincy.
KUOW reported that years of data-center tax revenue have helped support a state-of-the-art high school and hospital.
The city recently opened a new aquatic center, complete with a six-lane lap pool, lazy river and waterslides, and is planning a separate indoor sports complex.
Data centers are not an employment engine on their own. A single facility can operate with 50 employees or fewer, KUOW reported. But Quincy has enough facilities that the sector has become a meaningful employer in aggregate, while also supporting construction, service businesses and the city’s broader tax base.
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Microsoft says its new national approach will ask local utilities to set rates high enough to cover data-center energy use and grid upgrades without raising prices for residents. The company also says future facilities will use closed-loop cooling systems that recycle water rather than drawing from local supplies.
Quincy already has such a system. Microsoft and the city partnered on a $31 million water-reuse utility that treats and recirculates cooling water. The EPA says the project reduces the company’s reliance on potable groundwater and saves an estimated 138 million gallons of water a year.
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Still, Quincy is not without skeptics.
Former Mayor Patty Martin, according to KUOW, has warned that the town must look beyond its immediate economic gains and consider its long-term water and electricity needs, pointing to population growth, electric vehicles and changing snowpack as added pressures on the region.
Quincy’s boom shows what data centers can bring to a small town and the questions communities must answer before they arrive.
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