St. Joe County commissioners are seeing the first hard numbers on the massive water and sewer infrastructure needed to support the GM EV battery plant and Amazon data center that are coming.
They’re also planning for economic ripple effects from the two projects.
When you’re spending $11 billion, what’s another $114 million?
It should be enough to build the water and sewer infrastructure Amazon needs for its new data center. Such centers, also being built by Microsoft and Google to power the AI revolution, require vast amounts of water.
Amazon plans to spend nearly $63 million for municipal water infrastructure and more than $51 million for sewers and treatment.
The figures are spelled out in a memo to county commissioners from county economic development director Bill Schalliol. At their meeting Tuesday Schalliol will ask commissioners to approve agreements between the county and Amazon, and also between the county and the town of New Carlisle, to upgrade its water treatment plant and build a second plant out closer to the developments.
In anticipation of new suppliers and service industries stemming from the Amazon and GM projects, the Amazon agreement calls for the county to build water and sewer lines with about $11 million more capacity than what Amazon needs. As new users connect, Schalliol says the county will forward their connection fees to Amazon to offset some of its costs.
"Lot of development interest in the (Indiana Economic Center) right now and so having all these utilities in place and upgraded and expanded is really a huge win," Schalliol said. "And it's being done not at the taxpayers' expense, it's being done at the companies' expense, so it's just that much bigger of a win for the region."
