A brand new report from the nation’s main nationwide parks watchdog is sounding the alarm in regards to the growing impression of information facilities on a rising variety of park models and pure assets within the Mid-Atlantic—significantly Virginia, the place, the examine factors out, information heart progress has shot up greater than 500% since 2015.
Final week the nonprofit Nationwide Parks Conservation Affiliation warned that, on the present price of progress, the facilities—which take up giant quantities of land and use an abundance of water for cooling methods as they retailer and course of information for AI and cloud computing—may trigger important injury to a number of the area’s treasured parks and waterways, together with the Potomac River.
“Explosive water calls for from information facilities already pull an estimated eight % of all water withdrawals from the Potomac River,” mentioned Ben Alexandro, Founder and CEO of Alexandro Methods and the report creator, in an announcement. “If the speed of enlargement continues at this tempo, as a lot as 200 million gallons of water may very well be pulled from the Potomac River each day, over the subsequent few a long time.”
The report additionally factors out vulnerabilities to Shenandoah Nationwide Park and the Appalachian Path, which may very well be crisscrossed a number of instances by high-voltage powerlines.
Learn extra in regards to the report, which in the end requires environmental critiques and “widespread sense reforms” right here.
This week Democratic lawmakers Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched a invoice that may put a pause on information facilities till extra environmental guardrails and security measures may very well be carried out.
