‘The Precedent Is Flint’: How Oregon’s Data Center Boom Is Supercharging a Water Crisis Highlight

It never occurred to Doherty that his effort to fix the water problem would provoke the ire of a group of local officials who resented scrutiny of their role in the pollution. That it would end his political career, tank his cattle sales, and cause him so much stress he’d lose 50 pounds. He couldn’t have foreseen the multibillion-dollar political scandal submerged in that fouled water, the class action lawsuit that would rise from it, the intervention by the Oregon governor and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a civil suit from the Oregon attorney general, or sanctions from the state’s ethics commission and Department of Environmental Quality. He never thought parents in the area would be terrified that their children might sneak a glass of poisonous water from the kitchen sink. And he never imagined that one of the world’s largest tech companies — Amazon — could play a part in the crisis.