Amazon employees ask Seattle to put the brakes on new data centers
On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council will vote on whether to enact a one-year moratorium on new data centers — just two months after several companies proposed building five large-scale centers in the city. Among the moratorium’s fiercest supporters are current employees from the city’s biggest tech giant, Amazon, who joined others to testify in support of the policy last week.
Data centers have sparked protests acrossthecountry over concerns about water consumption, local electricity prices, and noise. In Seattle and the surrounding King County, the issue is coming to a head. If the city council votes in favor of a moratorium on June 9th, any new large-scale data center proposals in Seattle will be tabled for one year, during which it can consider legislation to figuratively (and perhaps literally) take power back.
At two city council hearings, residents spoke overwhelmingly in favor of the move — including engineers,...
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