Doing no "evil," Google proposes paving over protected wetlands for a data center
Doing no "evil," Google proposes paving over protected wetlands for a data center Jason Weisberger 12:27 pm Fri Aug 7, 2026 Image Via Google Google has encountered a difficult engineering problem at its enormous Fort Wayne data center: some of the land it wants to build on is protected wetlands. The solution is considerably simpler than artificial intelligence. 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.
- ▪Doing no "evil," Google proposes paving over protected wetlands for a data center Jason Weisberger 12:27 pm Fri Aug 7, 2026 Image Via Google Google has encountered a difficult engineering problem at its enormous Fort Wayne data center: some
- ▪The solution is considerably simpler than artificial intelligence.
- ▪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.
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| Original publisher | Boing Boing |
| Canonical URL | https://boingboing.net/2026/08/07/google-data-center-indiana-wetlands.html |
| Publication time | Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:27:54 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-07T19:50:43.756Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-07T19:50:43.756Z |
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| Cluster | mpZO9XAei4dM · 1 stories |
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Doing no "evil," Google proposes paving over protected wetlands for a data center Jason Weisberger 12:27 pm Fri Aug 7, 2026 Image Via Google Google has encountered a difficult engineering problem at its enormous Fort Wayne data center: some of the land it wants to build on is protected wetlands. The solution is considerably simpler than artificial intelligence. In the permitting documents for the not-evil-mastermind-sounding "Project Zodiac," Google's developer, Hatchworks, says that "meeting the project purpose and completely avoiding water resources was not feasible." The reason is that the buildings are very large and the wetlands are inconveniently located where Google wants parts of the data center to sit.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Boing Boing.
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