Apple has submitted a proposal to the City of Waukee in Iowa to transform some of its land surrounding its iCloud data center into a freshwater marsh. The company originally purchased over 2,000 acres of land in 2017 with plans to build a data center by 2020. Construction on the first of two data centers began in 2022.
Apple will be setting aside 592 acres of land for future data centers and storage facilities, while also reserving a portion for water management use. In the meantime, they aim to rehabilitate some of the excess land into a wetland restoration area with walking paths for public accessibility.
The company has committed to spending $430 billion on various development projects in the US, including the Iowa data centers, a campus in North Carolina, and facilities in Texas and California. The project in Waukee will involve repairing and rerouting field tiles to manage stormwater runoff and installing a sanitary sewer and water main across the site.
The city council staff has recommended the plan, and Apple is scheduled to seek formal approval for the project on August 13th, 2024. While there may be resistance to the expansion of Apple’s data centers in Waukee, protests have occasionally arisen regarding tech companies’ large power and water requirements for data centers. Public complaints have been made about environmental assurances in relation to Apple’s data center plans in Athenry, Ireland, leading to an ongoing court case.
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