The size of these Amazon and Google data installations is mind-boggling. They are built along the Columbia because they get cheap electricity from the hydro dams and also FREE river water to cool the fins of their massive semiconductor heat sinks. They get huge billion-dollar tax breaks, property, and income, because of the jobs they provide for the once-small communities along the river. While the jobs with good wages and benefits are great, the housing market is gone crazy. In just my small area, they build around 1000 new houses a year most selling above $400K. They brought on the massive wind turbine farms that line the once scenic Columbia River. We had an abundance of electricity and lots of surplus to sell before these hogs moved in. My property taxes have tripled as has the value of my place. If I sell I will have to leave the area to someplace with poor access to medical and higher cost electricity and limited water. They are driving us older retired folks out. They are building no senior communities or assisted living other than nursing home death camps. I found these photos online. No photos exist of their computer operating rooms where everyone is watched by guards until they are off the property. Security cameras are everywhere. This is all employees that work there can legally tell me. One young lady says she sits in a hall at a small table for her 8 hours watching a computer screen of the cameras and also directly eyeballs all the doors and records and reports anything suspicious in just her small area. They know when someone uses the bathroom or picks their nose. She says she has a boss that watches her and other security watchers under him. I had the thought that don't these massive installations attract enemy terrorism? I was told no because the Chinese have funded a great portion of these and should some Middle East Bag Mac Daddy try anything, he wouldn't fear the USA, but the Chinese communist might convert his country into glass. The millions of gallons of river water that these places boil daily, don't seem to be of concern to the environmentalist that once had break down hissy fits over the hydro turbines warming the water slightly and possible damage to the salmon. I guess now one can net a ready-to-eat poached salmon in the nearby side waters if they don't get arrested by homeland security first. Many of these data centers are kept secret and unmarked and assumed to be agricultural storage. Between Washington and Oregon, I would guess over 20 with 5 new ones in the making. It is enough to make me want to go off the grid and back up to the mountains. However, in my case, that would be suicide.
WOW , just WOW ! ! I had no idea that these existed, @Faye Fox . I have driving the Columbia River Gorge many times in the past, and as you say, it is a beautiful area. It has been over 20 years since I have been there, so I am sure that I have never seen these installations. Land and home prices have gone up everywhere. Even little towns like Bonners Ferry , which has not much of anything going for it work wise, has seen a huge boom in housing prices, and the same in Sandpoint. These are basically logging towns, but a lot of the logging was shut down back with the spotted owl debacle, so mostly retirees live there now. That is a lot of data centers. Are they all Amazon and Google ? It seems like Frank Sanoica reported on some kind of a similar sounding facility in his area several years ago, but I can’t recall who he said was building it. It was not on a river, so must have been for something that did not need all of the cooling.
A friend's son that lives up above Coeur d'Alene, Hayden I think, bought an older 3 bedroom house for $400K and rents out 2 rooms for $600 each a month to pay the mortgage. It is crazy up there. Lots of Californian patriots getting out of the madness in Calif. and feeling safe in Idaho where citizens have no problems carrying military-style weapons in public. Most are Amazon and a few are Google. In central Oregon, we see the huge robotic Amazon distribution centers and other massive centers for Apple and other technology places. In Frank's area, it is mainly massive solar-generating farms that are also in Nevada and a few in southern Oregon. I think they also have massive distribution centers. These massive centers were brought in without the community's knowledge, then the wind farms many now failing and in a state of decay and abandon. It is sickening! Here is one shot from the Washington side. If you look closely you can see thousands of turbines on the Oregon side. The thing is there are many rows behind the one you can see. Tens of thousands! Most were built under the Obama regime as were the massive centers. Mass destruction of the environment under the disguise of saving the planet. Wind currents are disturbed, migratory birds, are killed by the hundreds, river water is warmed and everything is out of kelter. You no longer see sail windsurfing as it takes a kite to deal with the changing patterns.
Wind turbines have ruined the view of some of Maine's mountains and destroyed the environment of these mountains for decades to come. This is being done by people who would have us believe they are the defenders of the earth and the environment.
For those of you wondering exactly where is "The Cloud" when you store your online data... well, there it is. Right there on the Columbia River.
Hahaha! Nice one girl. I wondered where my lost photos were. They were right above my nose all this time.