The first major development in Imperial County’s vaunted but stalled Lithium Valley may have nothing to do with lithium. Instead, a massive data server farm could replace hay fields on a 315-acre patch along Highway 111 at West Sinclair Road, the “gateway” to the proposed industrial zone in the Southern California desert. CalETHOS president and chief operating officer Joel Stone told The Desert Sun that the publicly traded start-up aims to break ground on a 200,000-square-foot data center by 2026. … Data centers, the physical backbone of the Internet, are notorious for using huge amounts of water and often polluting electricity. That concerns some in a county dependent on the dwindling Colorado River for all its water. … But Stone said they want to build a cutting-edge campus that uses the geothermal reserve for clean power and will require little water.

Other data center water use news:

• Circle of Blue: Blog: Data centers a small, but growing factor in Arizona’s water budget
• Data Center Dynamics: Blog: Natural gas-powered data center pitched in San Jose, California
• Tech Policy Press: Transcript: House hearing on the economics of AI data centers and power consumption