Anti-data center group forms to oppose Amazon development in Walla Walla County
Weaving through pedestrians on the sidewalks of Walla Walla's Main Street, College Place resident Rikki Wescott approached people she thought might be locals to ask what they knew about the data center proposed in the county.
When people said, "I don't," she asked if they wanted to learn more and handed them a flyer for a Friday, June 12, town hall, the first community event hosted by the Walla Walla Anti-Data Center League.
The league is a nonpartisan group that formed after the sale of 554 acres of land in west Walla Walla County by the Port of Walla Walla to Amazon Data Services. The group wants to stop Amazon's plan to build a data center, at least long enough to get a better sense of the company's plans and the potential environmental and social impact.
The league's members started attending the weekly Board of Commissioners meetings to urge the county's policymakers to pass a moratorium on data centers.
"The whole idea in this moratorium for us is to bring out transparency from Amazon," said organizer Ben Mattice, a member of the league's core working group. "We don't want a data center in our county that we don't know what is going on or understand what is going on.
"Especially if they're using public resources and public utilities, I believe that a large corporation like Amazon needs to be transparent, and so that's what got me into this fight, essentially, is it felt like secrecy," Mattice said at the town hall.
A moratorium is something the Board can consider, but Commissioner Bertha Clayton said it's not clear if a moratorium passed now would apply to Amazon's project.
"There is an issue with regards to timing and whether a moratorium could be considered by the Board if a permit application has already been filed. I don't know the answer to that myself," she said.
After the sale was approved, the data center moved into a pre-application phase with the county's Community Development Department. A complete application had not been filed as of Friday, and a lot of the specifics of the project, from the full power draw of the data center to how it will collect and expel water, are unknown.
Overall data for the resources required to operate data centers are well documented. According to the 2024 U.S. Data Center Energy Report released by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, data centers accounted for 1.9% of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2018. That number grew to 4.4% by 2023 and is predicted to grow to 6.7% by 2028.
The same study also found that data centers consumed 21.2 billion liters of water in 2014, which grew to 66 billion liters in 2023. Hyperscale data centers, such as the ones owned by Amazon and Microsoft, are expected to consume between 60 billion and 124 billion liters of water per year by 2028.
Jessica Hansen, a Walla Walla resident and member of the core group, said the league is looking at how similar projects have played out in other communities.
Some communities have been successful at stopping development. Those where projects have gone through have seen negative impacts from depleted water sources to threats to public health.
One nearby example is in Morrow County, one of 12 counties along the Columbia River where data centers are operating or proposed, where residents filed a lawsuit over contaminated ground water impacting well users. While Amazon denied that it contributed to the nitrate pollution, the company recently settled for $20.5 million.
"They want us to feel like we are David against Goliath, we have no chance to fight them because they just have all the resources, and we have none," Hansen said. "But there have been multiple examples of other communities throughout the nation that have won this fight in the exact same way that we are starting to fight ours, and so we are modeling our fight (after) them."
The Seattle Times reported that more than 70 cities and counties throughout the U.S. have enacted temporary or permanent bans on new data centers, according to a database maintained by hedge fund Interconnected Capital.
Seattle joined those ranks recently. The City Council passed a one-year moratorium on new data centers on Tuesday, June 9, along with a bill that will analyze how data centers impact a number of factors, from natural resources and electrical grids to public health.
City Council members in Spokane have also proposed a moratorium, and a vote was scheduled for Monday, June 15.
A group of activists who advocated for the moratorium in Seattle attended Friday's Walla Walla town hall.
"Seattle might have a moratorium, but where are they going to move all those data centers to?" Seattle-based activist Adrian Reyna said.
Another Seattle organizer, Emily Johnston, spoke about the specifics of a moratorium. After the ban, a stakeholder group will be created that will include tech representatives, community members, labor groups, water and energy experts.
"The idea behind it, basically, is that it buys you time," Johnston said. "It's the beginning of the work in a lot of ways, but also you can end up in a much stronger position."
Wescott, who passed out flyers ahead of the town hall, said the local community knows best how to mitigate water usage, protect salmon, cultivate vineyards and wheat fields in the area's environment.
"It's not that we're anti-tech, right? We all use tech all the time," said Wescott, who is a candidate for county commissioner District 3. "And it's not that we're anti-data center, per se - some people probably are - but if they're going to build it, they need to build it so that it's sustainable, and it's not going to hurt our delicate ecology.
"We need them to not just do the ‘tech thing' and move fast and break things," she continued.
Clayton, the commissioner representing District 1, said that the Board of Commissioners learned about the Amazon development at the same time as the rest of the community. Other board members were contacted for comment for this story but did not reply on deadline. Clayton said the Board has not discussed a moratorium.
"I think that that the public is reasonably off-put that this is a project that has a tremendous footprint, and there really hasn't been a lot known about it, and there really hasn't been, in my mind, sufficient space for the public to react and to have questions answered specifically about water usage, about impact to electricity, rates and usage and stress on the grid," she said. "I think these are all reasonable concerns."
She said those are questions that won't be answered until Amazon's application is complete. In the meantime, she said the Community Development Department has been working to answer the community's questions, with information available on a data center project webpage.
The Walla Walla Anti-Data Center League is doing its own research and outreach to inform the community about the project.
"I think there is a lot of confusion in the community, ‘Who do we believe?'" Hansen said. "We're always going to be very upfront with, ‘I don't know, but I will find out for you.'"
Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.