A nonprofit is starting a petition, calling for a moratorium on data center development in eastern Oregon.

On Tuesday, Oregon Rural Action launched the petition urging officials to immediately halt data center expansion, claiming ongoing harm to rural communities in the state’s data center hub.

ORA Launches Petition Calling for Eastern Oregon Data Center Moratorium

Calls to Rein in Runaway Growth Mount as Big Tech Plans Massive “Exascale” Project, Expansion of State’s Largest Data Center Hub

Oregon Rural Action ha lanzado esta semana una petición en la que exige que se detenga de inmediato la expansión de los centros de datos en el noreste de Oregón, alegando los perjuicios que esto sigue causando a las comunidades rurales en el mayor núcleo de centros de datos del estado.

For nearly four decades, families in the Lower Umatilla Basin have been drinking contaminated water while billion-dollar companies expanded around them.

The Oregon Department of Justice filed civil charges against the eight defendants a year ago, following an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive. The news organization found that the directors of a local nonprofit had arranged to sell Windwave to themselves and that the assumptions they used to set the purchase price didn’t account for the value of Windwave’s business with Amazon.

Across the country, Amazon, Google and other tech companies have stocked up on diesel generators to keep their data centers humming during power outages. Like diesel-powered buses, these generators chug out black exhaust full of air pollutants that can cause cancer, asthma and heart disease.

We all deserve to trust that our water is safe to drink, but Lower Umatilla Basin locals have been forced to live without safe drinking water for decades.

A federal judge has cleared the path for a lawsuit accusing the Port of Morrow, a power company, and agricultural businesses of polluting the groundwater in the Lower Umatilla Basin to move forward.