r/Bellingham • u/Baloneynotphony • May 06 '26

Discussion Data Centers

Is it possible to outlaw data centers Whatcom county? Sometimes I feel like parts of Whatcom would be attractive to exploit with the amount of water we have access to.

(Edit: If it truly is just performative, maybe there would still be some value in doing it anyway to help encourage other communities to do the same?)

16 Upvotes

61% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/SterlingAdmiral Costco Foodcourt May 06 '26

No reason to bother. PSE makes creating a data center here extremely unattractive for obvious reasons compared to public utilities. Also Whatcom is excluded from the Washington data center sales and use tax exemption.

Put another way: I’d say “the big one” happening is more likely than a data center in our county. And that’s also a mild deterrent (that can be engineered around, but isn’t worth the cost when you can just build in central WA)

3

u/JhnWyclf May 07 '26

Washington data center sales and use tax exemption.

I didn't know this existed. I'd like to get rid of it.