Apple Helps City Tap Ancient Underground Stream

When Apple makes a major investment in a community, it can be a contentious thing, sometimes leading to a lot of environmental controversy. For Apple’s latest data center in Crook County, Oregon, though, Apple is doing something for the local community that would seemingly be pretty hard to criticize: tapping an ancient, recently discovered underground stream to give the city clean water.

According to The Bulletin, the plan to tap the underground stream comes along with Apple’s official plans for an additional 500,000 square feet for data halls, office space, parking lots and loading docks on the 160 acres of Apple-owned land.

It’s a great thing for the local town, Prineville. The city apparently has something of a water problem and an unfortunate surplus of low-flow wells. According to Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester, Apple will be help convert this underground stream to a usable source of city water, and the city will reiburse Apple over time. He characterized it as a “tremendous upgrade to the system” that will give Apple enough water to run the data center, and the city much more capacity.

Unless there’s an objection raised or public comments submitted to the city, development will likely start in the beginning of September.

• Source Slashgear

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