A data center is a building filled with computer servers that keeps cloud software and artificial intelligence running. Communities across the country have raised alarms over electricity costs, water use, and limited local job creation from these facilities. Microsoft is now pointing to Quincy, Washington, a farming town of roughly 8,100 people in central Washington, as evidence that those concerns can be managed.
Microsoft began building in Quincy about 20 years ago. The company was drawn by affordable land, a cool climate that cuts the energy needed to keep servers from overheating, and abundant hydropower from the Columbia River. Quincy had long been known for potato fields, apple orchards, and food-processing plants. That identity has not changed, but data centers have become a meaningful part of the town's employment and tax base.
What the revenue actually built
A single data center runs lean. KUOW reported that one facility can operate with 50 employees or fewer. Quincy has enough facilities that the sector now employs a meaningful number of residents in aggregate, and the tax revenue has paid for visible public assets. KUOW reported that the money helped fund a high school and a hospital. The city recently opened an aquatic center with a six-lane lap pool, a lazy river, and waterslides.
The water question is harder. Data centers require substantial cooling, which historically meant drawing large volumes from local water supplies. Microsoft and Quincy partnered on a $31 million water-reuse utility that treats and recirculates cooling water. The Environmental Protection Agency says the project reduces Microsoft's reliance on potable groundwater and saves an estimated 138 million gallons a year.
What Microsoft says it will do elsewhere
The company 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 bills for other residents. Future facilities, it says, will use closed-loop cooling systems that recycle water. Quincy already has one.
Former Mayor Patty Martin, according to KUOW, has warned that the town must look past its current economic gains and consider long-term pressure on water and electricity, pointing to population growth, electric vehicles, and changing snowpack. The EPA-verified figure of 138 million gallons saved a year is the most concrete number Quincy has to offer skeptics elsewhere.