データセンターの町で貧困率は29%から6%へ、電気代は住宅用3.5%上昇

"Just about all the infrastructure and services are new and improved in this rural central Washington farming town of 8,500, miles from the Columbia River. There's a $120 million state-of-the-art high school. Hospital. Public library. Police and fire stations. Paved sidewalks, sewage systems and wastewater treatment plant. It's been made possible by data centers."／"Roughly 30 data centers shoulder an estimated 57% of Quincy's property taxes, funding the city's public building spree."／"A $15 million aquatic center with a six-lane pool, waterslides and a lazy river opened in Quincy, Washington, a few weeks ago."／"It's part of the public parks splurge in the city, which will culminate next year with the opening of the Q-Plex, a 143,000-square-foot indoor sports complex."／"In 2006, Microsoft bought 75 acres of bean fields in an industrial zone in Quincy to build a 500,000-square-foot company-owned data center for its Bing search engine and Hotmail email servers."— CNN より

"They created around 900 jobs for engineers, pipefitters and electricians in the town. Each of those also generates four to six other jobs in construction, retail and local services, according to Washington State analyses."／"New businesses, nonprofits and neighborhoods have popped up to cater to people moving to town, and the poverty rate has fallen from 29.4% in 2012 to 6.2% in 2024."— CNN より

"The public believes that data centers drive up the cost of electricity. Electricity bills have gone up in Quincy, but large industrial customers like data centers are shouldering the burden. Residential power rates went up 3.5% last year in Grant County, home to Quincy, while large industrial customers' rates went up 9.1%."／"Data centers and other large users pay for the infrastructure and generation needed to serve their large power loads — costs are not spread to residential customers."— CNN より

"Data centers also only use around 8% of the city's water supply, officials say. Microsoft partnered with the city to build a $30 million water reuse facility to process cooling water for data centers and other industries. More than 50% of water in Quincy goes to food processors."／"Data centers use enormous amounts of energy, and Quincy has some of the lowest power rates in the country generated by two public hydroelectrical plants on the Columbia River, the largest river in the Pacific Northwest."— CNN より

"Home prices have roughly doubled over the last decade, rising faster than incomes, as more people move to Quincy. New single-family neighborhoods have been going up, but the town lacks apartment buildings and rentals. Quincy recently approved a zoning code change to making it easier to build rentals for low and middle-income households."／"Many of these agricultural workers have missed out on the data center economy, said Nina Martinez, the executive director of the Latino Civic Alliance in Washington. "A lot of the workforce is coming from other places," she said."／"Quincy's Hispanic population increased from 37% in 1990 to around 75%, and a large migrant farmworker population also works there part of the year."／""Families have been pushed out," Martinez said. "No average farmworker or agricultural worker can afford it.""— CNN より