This letter is in response to “Data centers come knocking. Are local power and water supplies available?”

Dear Editor,

I wanted to write in response to Pam Zubeck’s excellent (as always) reporting from March 14. As tech corporations continue their expansion across the country, Colorado Springs should not make the mistake of welcoming large-scale data centers into our community, especially given the extraordinary strain they place on water resources we simply do not have to spare. We are heading into summer after a record hot and dry winter, in one of the hottest years on record globally. We’ve seen this coming, and cannot be in denial about the reality of climate change; we must be honest about what that means for fire risk, water supply, and the general livability of our city in the coming months and years. The Colorado River, where we get much of our water, is already in a state of long-term crisis. Pretending we can absorb additional industrial-scale water demand without consequence, regardless of current stores, is not just optimistic; it is willfully negligent.

Data centers are extraordinarily resource-intensive operations, requiring massive amounts of water for cooling while returning little value to their host communities. This pattern has played out across the country: communities are promised economic benefits and “innovation,” only to find themselves saddled with strained infrastructure and depleted resources. We should not fool ourselves into thinking we will somehow be the exception. These tech companies are not operating out of a sense of civic goodwill; they are driven by profit, not care. In a region as water-scarce as our alpine desert, that profit will come at the direct expense of our long-term sustainability.

We don’t need data centers taking our already limited water, and I hope our leaders, both in public and private offices, do right by the people of our city by ensuring that cannot happen.

Pierce Gillard