Data centers’ water allotment to be 80% less than former printing plants in Lancaster city

• By Chris Reber / LNP | LancasterOnline

The two proposed Lancaster city data centers’ combined daily water usage will average less than the equivalent of 156 households using the Lancaster County average of 257 gallons per day, according to records filed with water regulators this week.

The developers planning the centers at 216 Greenfield Road and 1375 Harrisburg Pike informed the Susquehanna River Basin Commission on Wednesday that each location will use less than 20,000 gallons per day on average. Both properties are served by the city’s municipal water system.

As recently as Tuesday, two pending applications from the developer would have allowed them to use as much water as the LSC Communications printing plants that they replaced – 249,900 gallons per day combined. While those applications stated that the facilities would use much less, their approval would have given them the same amount, according to the commission.

On Wednesday, the day after LNP | LancasterOnline asked about the requests to use as much as the former LSC printing plants, the developers emailed the commission to clarify they wanted the properties’ consumptive use approval rescinded. The developers would not tell LNP | LancasterOnline why it requested the water allotment in the first place, or exactly how much water the facilities will use.

“We’ve rescinded the legacy water permits at both sites and will reduce permitted water use by more than 80% compared to prior operations. No municipal water will be used in our cooling systems,” David Kelly of Chirisa Technology Parks wrote in a statement.

Consumptive use approval from the commission is required for any non-agriculture customer in the Susquehanna River basin that draws more than 20,000 gallons of water per day without returning it to the basin.

Potential strain

The data centers’ potential water usage has been among opponents’ major concerns about the project. Many have cited examples of data centers in other communities that use more than 500,000 gallons per day to cool their equipment, impacting wells and leading to increased water rates. Lancaster city is seeking a rate increase on customers outside the city that use its system, but it’s unrelated to data center water use.

Pennsylvania is seen as having a relatively rich water supply, but there are exceptions, like when Lancaster city asked residents to conserve water last year because of low water levels on the Conestoga River.

The basin commission’s executive director, Andrew DeHoff, recently testified before a state Senate committee that the largest data centers – known as hyperscale data centers – have the potential to evaporate millions of gallons per day if they use water cooling, putting a strain on local water resources.

“With the anticipated water demands, hyperscale data centers have the potential to be among the largest consumers of water in Pennsylvania, especially when considered as a whole,” said DeHoff, who advocated for using alternative cooling technology he said can reduce the water usage of power plants and data centers by up to 98%.

The LSC printing plants’ combined water allotment was less than that of an 18-hole golf course, and a fraction of a natural gas power plant’s, but it was still equivalent to 830 households, and according to Mayor Danene Sorace, among the largest users in the city.

During a press conference with the developers in July, Sorace said that the data centers would use less water than the printing plants did, adding that the city would have the ability to deny any user if it feels it doesn’t have the capacity to serve.

Under LSC, the Greenfield Road plant was allotted 150,000 gallons per day and the Harrisburg Pike site was allotted 99,000 gallons per day, though they often used less than that amount, according to city officials. Water was used in the printing process and cooling units.

Using that water allotment for the data centers would have involved a two-step process. The developers took the first step in June, getting the commission to transfer the plants’ consumptive use approvals. The second step, a request to change the use from printing to data centers, was filed for both sites earlier this month, and was pending commission approval before Wednesday.

If the developers hadn’t filed those requests, the consumptive use approval would have been rescinded automatically, according to commission spokesperson Stacey Hanrahan.

 

Difficult to assess

The lack of detailed information on the centers’ water use is similar to other projects across the country, according to Melissa Scanlan, the Lynde B. Uihlein Endowed Chair in Water Policy, and director of the Center for Water Policy at the UW-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. Scanlan, who researches data centers’ impact on natural resources nationwide, said the industry’s fast growth and use of confidentiality agreements makes it difficult for a community to evaluate their true impact before approval.

A few states have proposed bills that would require them to report those figures, she said, but so far none have passed.

“The communities don’t really know what they’re getting until the facilities are built, and everything is in motion and hard to stop at that point,” she said.