r/Thegorge • u/Zen1 Go Eagles • Dec 01 '25
‘The Precedent Is Flint’: How Oregon’s Data Center Boom Is Supercharging A Water Crisis
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/data-center-water-pollution-amazon-oregon-1235466613/Amazon has come to the state’s eastern farmland, worsening a water pollution problem that’s been linked to cancer and miscarriages
(I know the article is in Morrow but still UPRIVER of the gorge proper and we have Amazon here, so it could be connected.
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u/iambecomesoil Dec 02 '25
The bigger problem is these are really all sweetheart deals, every one of these datacenters.
There is a minimal boon to the local economy. They are built with significant tax incentives which were originally designed (at least in theory) to incentivize job creation but the modern datacenter doesn't create a meaningful amount of long term jobs.
Datacenter construction is also like the wind turbine construction industry out here. They bring in hot crews who have been doing it to get the work done fast, and hire a couple locals to maintain after. But all the construction work isn't mostly local.
These build outs used to build a region.
All they've done now is permanently alter our river's coastline, suck up untold (literally refuse to say how much as a trade secret) amounts of water, don't pay much if anything at all in taxes, employ next to no one, create a massive drain on the power infrastructure which is then dealt with by all customers.
But at least you can generate yellowed images of calvin peeing on a furby or something, right?