The City of Goodyear and Microsoft Corp. have updated their development agreement for future projects. Microsoft will change its cooling system on future data centers and contribute nearly $42M to expanding Goodyear’s wastewater capacity.
To date, Microsoft has developed a 290KSF building and has another 250KSF building under construction. It plans to start another 250KSF building soon. The company also has plans for a five-building data center on approximately 300 acres near the Phoenix Goodyear Airport.
Microsoft and Goodyear have been in discussions for years about the volume of wastewater produced by cooling its data centers. This is the third revision to the infrastructure agreement.
Under the revised agreement, Microsoft will pay $36M of a planned $90M expansion at Goodyear’s 157th Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant to replace and reimburse wastewater impact fees. The company will also be allowed to use 1.2 million gallons of capacity/day when the plant is fully built out.
Microsoft will also deposit $5M for financial assurance toward the cost of a new sewer line and $800K to pay for a City coordinator to facilitate the data centers’ development.
The company’s fourth and fifth buildings will now be required to use air cooling, rather than the direct evaporative cooling originally intended. The water cooling method would have needed a maximum of 5 million gallons per day to be delivered to the site.
Microsoft is required to complete construction on a dedicated discharge line to bring wastewater from the data centers to the treatment plant by Aug. 31 of next year. (Source)