Washtenaw County is at a critical crossroads as massive new data centers move in, creating an environmental and public health dilemma. While these facilities promise economic growth driven by AI and cloud computing, local experts warn that their unprecedented demands for electricity and water are straining aging infrastructure and threatening long-term community resilience.
The Unpaid Toll on Resources
Hyperscale data centers, like the one proposed in Saline Township, require continuous power and cooling. The single Saline facility is slated to draw 1.4 Gigawatts of electricity, which is the equivalent of adding over a million households to the grid. This enormous energy consumption immediately destabilizes a local power grid already plagued by frequent, prolonged outages.
The reliance on fossil fuels to power these centers creates a vast, invisible environmental cost known as the “unpaid toll.” Academic modeling reveals that the air pollution generated by the energy required to run data centers across the country could soon rival the public health burden associated with all on-road vehicle emissions in large states.
While the Saline developer chose a closed-loop cooling system to avoid evaporating millions of gallons of water daily, this solution only shifts the water burden:
- Groundwater Risk: The facility still needs a one-time, multi-million-gallon fill estimated at 10-40 million gallons of fresh water for its closed-loop system. To secure tax breaks, the developer plans to use an on-site well, creating an immediate risk of groundwater depletion that could cause neighboring private wells to run dry.
- Hidden Water Footprint: Generating 1.4 GW of power requires significant amounts of water at the power plant itself. The indirect water footprint of the single Saline center is estimated to consume millions of gallons of water every day just for electricity production.
Resilience and the Regulatory Loophole
The urgency of the situation is heightened by the vulnerability of the county’s public health systems. When the grid fails, medically dependent residents face life-threatening risks, and hospitals lose the ability to refrigerate critical medicines.
Beth Gibbons, Washtenaw County’s Resiliency Office Director, has called the situation “economic development without a regulatory component.” She noted that the state’s tax incentive laws create a critical loophole that local townships cannot stop. The state requires data centers to use municipal water to qualify for tax breaks, but the Saline developer bypassed this constraint by striking a deal: the private well will be legally “dedicated to the Township as a municipal water system” for tax purposes, while the developer retains responsibility for its construction and upkeep.
For further context on infrastructure and safety considerations in large-scale development projects, visit fall protect for more details. Proper safety and compliance frameworks are often essential in preventing regulatory gaps from creating long-term operational risks.
This arrangement allows the developer to secure valuable tax exemptions while using a private groundwater source, circumventing local oversight and exacerbating the risk to neighboring homes. Gibbons warned that, given the scale of development, the county’s goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2035 is a “non-starter.”
Recommendations for Local Control
To regain local authority and protect public resources, officials are urging the adoption of aggressive new policies:
- Water Recycling Mandates: Townships should adopt ordinances requiring all new data centers to use recycled or closed-loop cooling and explicitly banning the use of local wells for the massive initial system fill-up.
- Resource Impact Fees: The county should levy substantial impact fees on the projected energy and water consumption of these facilities. These funds should be used to offset the cost of DTE infrastructure upgrades for residents and compensate for local environmental burdens.
- Moratorium and Oversight: Officials should immediately establish a moratorium on new development and mandate a comprehensive Environmental Impact Study on the cumulative effect of all proposed data centers on local grid reliability, air quality, and water levels.
Policy Resource Tool:
The Need for Transformative, North Star Policy to Stop Rampant Data Center Expansion (Google Doc):
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1x8KsCVOhJS97rxzdd_bWW4Me1Errpj6ggyU5dAdNKUM/mobilebasic
For a scholarly article with reference, please see:
The Environmental Health Impact of Data Centers in Washtenaw County
