As the data center backlash grows, support is growing for server factories and the hundreds of jobs they're expected to bring. Last month, Pamela Griffin and two other residents of Taylor, Texas, took to the lectern at a city council meeting to object to a data center project. But later, they sat back as council members discussed a proposed tech factory. Griffin didn't speak up against that development. A similar contrast is repeating in communities across the US.

This year, Samsung is planning to open a semiconductor chip manufacturing plant in Taylor, TX, that will cost the company an estimated 17 billion. Intel is building a 20-billion facility in Columbus, OH, and industry leaders GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and Texas Instruments are building their own so-called chip fabs in the U.S. as well. This construction boom has been spurred in part by increasing demand for the smartphones, personal electronic devices, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) services that depend on chips, and the 50 billion in funding that the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act allocated to American semiconductor manufacturing has proven to be a strong incentive. Yet the boom is global, with new plants being developed all over the world. As companies plan these new chip fabs, one of the first questions they need to answer is where they are going to get their water.