EDITORIAL: Our water is a coveted treasure

Water and green countryside are among the assets most valued by residents of Port Washington and the surrounding areas of Ozaukee County. The nearby Great Lake with its beauty and recreation opportunities, the open spaces of farmland and natural areas and the lifestyle they all complement are what many people love best about living here and what brings new residents to our communities.

How ironic then that those same features are what has made Port Washington a target for mega scale industrial development that threatens to compromise the character that is so highly valued by residents.

The data center on its way to Port Washington and the huge microchip factory that attempted to precede it were attracted by the vast amount of available water and open space.

As much as 2,000 acres of farmland are waiting in the Town of Port Washington to be turned into an industrial site. They were worth so much to the failed microchip initiative and now to the data center that a total of about $84 million will be paid for the land. This might not meet the dictionary definition of a land grab, but when the astonishing price of $42,000 an acre is offered for rural land, it accomplishes pretty much the same thing. When the choice for landowners is to accept payments that will be in the millions for some holdings or refuse to sell and have to live and work next to a sprawling data center, it qualifies as one of those proverbial offers you can’t refuse.

To the tech industrial operators, the Lake Michigan water available from the City of Port Washington is just as precious as the land.

Chip manufacturing facilities like the one that was proposed for town land the city would annex can use 10 million gallons of “ultrapure water per day, the equivalent usage of 33,000 U.S. households,” according to a report by Great Lakes ReNEW, a water innovation organization supported by the National Science Foundation.

The water demands of these semiconductor factories are so great that when the microchip operation was being debated there was unfounded speculation the plant would have to build a pipeline directly to Lake Michigan along with its own water treatment plant.

Data centers that need water for cooling their masses of heat-producing computer servers are also prodigious water consumers. In Virginia, data centers are diverting so much drinking water from municipal systems that groundwater levels in aquifers are diminishing.

Water for the anticipated Port data center won’t affect groundwater because it will come from the biggest reserve of freshwater in the world, the Great Lakes.

Drawn from the lake and purified in the city water treatment plant, it will be pumped miles from its source to the data complex. The infrastructure required after the land is annexed will include a major construction project to extend water and sewer pipelines to the site and probably add a lift station.

The water demands of the Port data center aren’t known, but another “biggest” superlative (biggest electricity user in the state, etc.) might be applied when it is up and running—the biggest customer of the Port Washington water utility. It’s safe to say the owner of the billion-dollar complex won’t be complaining about the price, unlike the residential buyers of Port water, who are not happy about drastic water rate increases that will soon add up to a 67% hike since 2023.

Water rate inflation, of course, makes it cost more to live in Port Washington. The average bimonthly water bill for a city home was $96 in 2023. By next year it is expected to be $170.

Skyrocketing water bills became inevitable when the DNR flagged deferred filtration plant maintenance that requires a $18.3 million fix. Grumbling by ratepayers is understandable, but a limitless source of pure, safe water is worth the price.

Empty hydrants in the midst of wildfires in Southern California in January were a vivid symbol of what it’s like to be living in areas of the country where residents do not have the privilege of a guaranteed supply of the water they pay for.

As climate change takes its toll, water is a resource with a rising value, to the point where now it is expected to fuel an economic boom in parts of the Midwest that have it in abundance.

We denizens of the Great Lakes Basin love of our water. It’s a mixed blessing that giants of the tech industry love it too.