Republished with permission from Wyoming News Now, a TV news outlet covering the Cheyenne and Casper areas.
Google recently held a public informational presentation about its $17 billion data center called Project Tembo.
The project would be built eight miles south of Cheyenne in the Switchgrass Industrial Park. The site is surrounded by rural, agricultural private and state-owned land as well as a solar field.
The project was formerly called Project Jade and spearheaded by Crusoe, but the company backed out this spring. Google is scaling back a bit by removing one of five proposed warehouses and halving the number of peak construction workers, according to Cap City News.
Google claims it’d use minimal water through a closed loop system that is air cooled. To not interfere with community resources, the company plans to pull water from deep wells beneath the local watershed.
"From a stewardship perspective, it's not just about conservation of water on-site,” Google’s Water Supply and Infrastructure Lead Joey Terrano said at the open house. “It's about leaving the local ecosystem stronger than we found them. Google has pledged to replenish 120% of the freshwater we consume across our operations by 2030.”
Google claims to have 165 active watershed projects in 97 watersheds, replenishing billions of gallons of water each year.
Google also said it will treat its wastewater so that all discharge will be clean water going into onsite lined evaporative ponds.
Google told residents the project will bring about 2,500 local construction roles at its peak, followed by about 250 long-term operational jobs, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
"We hire a wide variety of folks at our data centers, and those folks can come from a wide variety of backgrounds,” said Data Center Operations Leader Joe Sprowls.
Google also addressed common data center issues.
Data centers typically come with a lot of noise. Google said it will comply with all noise limits set by the county rules.
The Google data center will use diesel generators, which are known to cause air pollution. The company said these generators will be reviewed and approved under a Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) air permit.
Google also said it will work to incorporate design elements based on recommendations from Wyoming Game and Fish.
Residents have their own doubts about data centers as a whole.
One resident, during the Q&A section of the meeting, said, "We are individually talking about the Google data center. Okay, yeah, sounds good. But what about all the multiple others? The South Side is already getting stressed."
Another resident who lives near the project site was worried about a plan to run a road near his property.
"So, you will be going up by the house, and I assume you are going to tear that house down. My niece and nephew used to live in that."
Google answered "yes" to running a road near his house and knocking down the nearby house.
Project Tembo is still under review from local governments and hasn’t broken ground yet.
