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AWS says Calverton site would reuse Constellation process water; most cooling by outside air
Summary
AWS told residents it would not require new cooling water for the proposed Calverton campus, instead reusing Constellation's process water and relying on outside-air cooling for about 96% of cooling operations, with the remainder using process water.
Becky Ford, representing Amazon Web Services' economic development team, addressed community concerns about water use and cooling at a potential data center campus adjacent to Constellation.
Ford said the site would use potable water for routine employee needs and would reuse Constellation's existing process cooling water rather than drawing new sources for cooling. "One of the biggest benefits of this project is that there is no new water required to cool our data centers," Ford said, adding that returned water would be handled through Constellation's existing permit and discharge processes.
She also told attendees that AWS relies on outside-air cooling most of the year: "96% of the year, we cool our data centers with air, free flowing air from the outside. The other 4% of the time, we'll use that cooling water to help cool down the air," Ford said. Ford pointed to visual materials in the open house for more technical detail and said monitoring and compliance data would be available through the permit process.
Because the design is preliminary, Ford cautioned that the exact engineering and monitoring plans will be refined through permitting and public processes.
