One of those is water. A data center is a huge building (or sometimes a campus of huge buildings) designed to hold computer servers. Like an everyday laptop or desktop computer, they get hot as they work. But unlike computers at home, a simple fan won’t be enough to cool them off.
Instead, they employ large-scale cooling systems to keep the electronics in working order. And some of those systems require the same amount of water as around 60,000 people — that’s about the population of Enid or Moore.
That could be a big deal for a community like Coweta, which is home to 11,000 residents. Community member Patrick Sampson attended an open house in late October to learn about a proposed data center near his home. He was particularly concerned about how much water the proposed data center would use, and where its wastewater would go. And he said he wasn’t finding solid answers at the meeting…