Washington

~80 facilities5% of facilities tracked here

The headline number

Quincy

a town of 8,000 whose hydro-powered data centers made it the per-capita compute capital of America

Water stress

Low on the Columbia, with a real local caveat: Quincy's aquifer-supplied cooling prompted treated-wastewater reuse projects after agricultural users objected.

The local story

Grant County's hydro dams sell some of the cheapest, lowest-water electricity in the hemisphere, which is why Microsoft, Sabey, Yahoo-era pioneers and now AI tenants stacked campuses in tiny Quincy among the potato fields.

Quincy also hosts the genre's classic small-town conflict: data centers initially cooled from the same aquifer farmers irrigate from, and the eventual fix (a city reuse facility treating cooling water for industrial recycling) is now the standard playbook quote for 'how to do this right.'

The structural point Washington proves: pair compute with hydro and the Mid scenario nearly collapses into the Low one, because the electricity's water term is minimal. Where the power comes from matters more than where the servers sit.

Cite this pagev1.3.1 · 2026-09

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