Doing no "evil," Google proposes paving over protected wetlands for a data center
Indiana regulators approved a Phase III water-quality permit in June for the Fort Wayne project despite resident and environmental objections.
Google has a difficult engineering problem at its enormous Fort Wayne data center: some of the land it wants to build on is protected wetlands.
The search giant’s solution is simple: build anyway. In the permitting documents for the not-evil-mastermind-sounding "Project Zodiac," Google's developer, Hatchworks, claims "meeting the project purpose and completely avoiding water resources was not feasible." Translation: the wetlands are inconveniently located where Google wants parts of the data center to sit.
And if state authorities decide to go ahead with the data center campus, it would be permanently carving up a slice of Indiana's all-important floodplains. These wetlands serve many valuable functions, not just as home for diverse plant and animal life, but also as a natural basin for rainwater, protecting nearby communities from flooding and soil erosion.
Much of the incoming data center campus would occupy a parcel of pre-paved farmland, likely geoengineered from its original wetland long ago. Rather than color within those lines, Google's Hatchworks would rather stick to its original design plans, explaining in its filing with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management that it's simply impossible to avoid shellacking the marshland.
Indiana regulators have repeatedly permitted the environmental impacts. They issued the Phase III water-quality certificate in June after a public hearing chock full of objections from residents and environmental groups. The approved plan includes mitigation for affected wetlands.
The official paperwork calls this "avoidance and minimization." There is considerably more minimization than avoidance.