Morrow County, a predominantly rural region situated in northeastern Oregon, has long been recognized for its vast expanses of agricultural land and the presence of large-scale industrial farming operations and food processing plants. These mega farms, emblematic of the state’s agribusiness sector, produce enormous quantities of crops and livestock, sustaining both local employment and national supply chains. Yet, within the same landscape of fields, silos, and irrigation channels now rise the towering structures of Amazon-owned data centers—facilities housing countless servers that sustain the digital infrastructure underlying modern cloud computing. This unlikely coexistence of intensive agriculture and high-tech industries has created a complex ecological and social dynamic, which some environmental scientists and public health experts now suggest is contributing to an increasingly dangerous situation: an alarming accumulation of nitrates in the groundwater that provides drinking water for Morrow County’s residents. The potential link between this contamination and rising cases of cancer and miscarriages has become a major source of concern and debate within the community and beyond.
A recent exposé published by *Rolling Stone* investigates how Amazon’s activities, while indirectly related to the agricultural sector’s pollution, may in fact be amplifying an already critical problem. The report emphasizes that Amazon’s data centers themselves do not use nitrates as part of their cooling systems. However, through their immense demand for water and their integration with the region’s wastewater infrastructure, these facilities appear to be accelerating the degradation of the Lower Umatilla Basin aquifer—an underground water reservoir that thousands of residents depend on for drinking and household use. Environmental researchers describe a confluence of factors driving this process: inefficient or poorly managed wastewater systems, the region’s naturally sandy and highly porous soil, and simple physical principles governing the movement of water and contaminants. Collectively, these circumstances have permitted nitrate concentrations in some wells to reach as high as seventy-three parts per million—figures that exceed Oregon’s legal threshold of seven parts per million by a factor of ten and the federal limit by sevenfold. Such levels represent a severe breach of public safety standards.
According to *Rolling Stone*, a number of hydrologists and environmental analysts argue that Amazon’s entry into the region “supercharged” preexisting pollution pathways. The data centers, they explain, extract tens of millions of gallons of water annually from the aquifer to cool their densely packed banks of servers. After this water circulates through the cooling systems, it is redirected into the Port of Morrow’s wastewater management network. Once there, it becomes part of a larger cycle in which nitrate-rich wastewater is distributed for agricultural reuse, often sprayed onto nearby fields as an irrigation or fertilizer supplement. Unfortunately, Morrow County’s sandy soil cannot effectively retain or filter these substances, allowing dissolved nitrates to leach downward until they reenter the same aquifer from which the system draws its supply. The ongoing extraction and reinjection cycle, therefore, perpetuates and intensifies contamination over time.
The problem compounds further when the very water that has already surpassed federal nitrate limits is once again pumped out of the ground and recirculated through Amazon’s data centers. Within the cooling process, as the water absorbs heat from the electronic equipment, a portion of it evaporates; yet, the nitrates themselves remain concentrated in the residual fluid. This natural evaporation increases the overall concentration of contaminants. When the water subsequently returns to the wastewater system, it is even more polluted than before, with nitrate readings reported to average around fifty-six parts per million—approximately eight times the level deemed safe by Oregon’s environmental health standards. This cyclical contamination not only strains the aquifer’s resilience but also endangers the long-term health of communities relying on this crucial water source.
Amazon, for its part, firmly rejects the conclusions drawn by *Rolling Stone* and the experts cited in the article. Company spokesperson Lisa Levandowski described the report as “misleading and inaccurate,” asserting that the portion of water Amazon’s facilities consume and discharge back into the system represents only a minimal fraction of the region’s overall water usage. From the company’s perspective, this small contribution could not plausibly produce a “meaningful impact” on groundwater quality. Levandowski further noted that Morrow County’s issues with nitrate-laden groundwater “significantly predate AWS’s presence,” implying that the origins of the crisis lie in decades of agricultural fertilizer use, livestock waste mishandling, and regional water mismanagement. Still, critics argue that even if these problems existed long before Amazon’s arrival, the company’s decision to build massive, water-intensive data centers in an already vulnerable area raises ethical and environmental questions. If the corporation knew that Morrow County struggled to provide clean drinking water to its residents, why did it not take additional steps to mitigate its influence? Moreover, why was this particular location chosen in the first place, given the clear risks to local infrastructure and public health?
The growing body of evidence linking elevated nitrate levels to increased incidences of rare cancers and miscarriages gives urgency to these questions. Nitrates, while common in agricultural settings, are known to pose serious risks when consumed at high concentrations, particularly for infants, pregnant women, and individuals with compromised immune systems. Despite the recognition of this threat, tangible measures to slow the spread of contamination and ensure residents’ access to clean, safe drinking water have proceeded at a discouragingly slow pace. Activists and nonprofit organizations working in the region lament that the governmental and corporate responses remain fragmented, underfunded, and insufficiently transparent. With roughly forty percent of Morrow County’s population living below the poverty line, the socioeconomic vulnerability of the community compounds the gravity of the crisis. Residents have few political connections, limited financial means, and often minimal understanding of the invisible hazards seeping into their wells.
Kristin Ostrom, executive director of the advocacy group Oregon Rural Action (ORA), summarized this imbalance in her remarks to *Rolling Stone*. “These are people who have no political or economic power,” she explained, “and very little knowledge of the risk.” In essence, the people most affected by the pollution are those least equipped to challenge it. Observers have drawn stark parallels between this unfolding environmental emergency and the notorious Flint, Michigan water crisis, both marked by systemic neglect, environmental injustice, and the suffering of marginalized communities. As Morrow County grapples with the toxic consequences of industrial growth and technological expansion, the story serves as a sobering reminder that the benefits of economic progress and digital infrastructure often come at a hidden human and ecological cost.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/news/834151/amazon-data-centers-oregon-cancer-miscarriage
