The 2008 Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact is a legally binding agreement among eight states in the Great Lakes region that permanently bans the diversion of Great Lakes water out of the basin to protect, conserve, and manage those waters.
Now, with data center development taking center stage for many communities, the strength of that compact is being tested. Data centers use fresh water to keep servers from overheating.
Peter Johnson is Secretary for the compact: “If there is a consumptive use in the proposal of over 5 million gallons per day averaged over any 90-day period, the state where that proposal is located has to provide notice to all the other states and provide them with a 90-day time period to provide comments.”
However, there are no water use reporting requirements for data centers, and around 97% are connected to public water supplies.
Jonathan Noble is with Microsoft. The tech giant is looking to build at least three data centers in West Michigan. Noble says the company is moving away from utilizing nondisclosure agreements to maintain transparency.
“This is about a partnership and collaboration with the community, and NDAs were working counter to that partnership, and therefore no longer had a place for it as a way to our interactions with local governments.”
Data centers can use anywhere between 300,000 and 5 million gallons of water per day.
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