To the County Commissioners of Walla Walla County:

We, the people of Walla Walla County, are calling for a moratorium on data center construction in the County of Walla Walla.

Walla Walla county water resources are already stretched thin. According to USGS monitoring, our groundwater supply is low and overdrawn, and our deep-water aquifer supply is shrinking. College Place residents are already being told to voluntarily conserve water. Soon water restrictions will become necessary.

Yet, Amazon is slated to build a massive data center in our county that will tap into our own aquifer system and pump massive amounts of water out of our water supply just to cool their power-hungry computers. This is not fair to the residents of Walla Walla County.

The residents of Walla Walla County deserve to have good industry neighbors. Amazon Web Services has proven time and again they are not good neighbors. They have lied to the public about their water use, they knowingly utilized bad wastewater treatment plants in Oregon that poisoned the regional well water, and they pressured regulators to turn a blind eye to their abuses in other states. Now they are asking for a rubber stamp from Walla Walla County to build their data center here.

Amazon Web Services has pinky-promised our county officials they will only build to the capacity of our power grid, and no further. Their track record in other parts of the nation casts doubt. In Oregon, their data center buildout over the years has increased reliance on air-polluting generators and power plants. Their backup diesel generators pump pollution into the air. Nobody should have to breathe dirty air, especially the people in Burbank and Attalia.

Last year, national wholesale rates for electricity shot up 75% on data center demand alone. Yet, they tell us our rates won’t spike. They tell us to have faith in small modular nuclear reactors, when only two on the entire planet have ever been turned on. What happens when their pipe dream fails to materialize? Who gets stuck with the bill when they increase demand in our region? It certainly won’t be Amazon.

Moreover, this spring, the County Board of Commissioners were asked to consider a proposed 123-acre expansion of the McNary Wildlife Refuge. Officials at Mid-Columbia River NWRC, tell us this expansion may not be finalized for at least a year. If Amazon were to submit SEPA now, it would avoid considering impacts to the proposed expansion.

For the sake of the people of this county, we are asking Walla Walla County to stand with the people and institute a moratorium until environmental protections are put in place in Walla Walla County, and Amazon Web Services is entirely transparent about their water use, environmental impact, grid impacts, and wastewater treatment and disposal for their entire 16 data center build, and, or will submit to a full Environmental Impact Study on their entire 16 data center build.

We must hold Amazon accountable. We must have a moratorium now before it’s too late.