Micron picks Syracuse for computer chip plant that would bring up to 9k jobs
syracuse.com
syracuse.com
We have a lot of water in the area, and foundries are very water intensive. That was a smart long term play of Micron. Very happy to hear about this.
FTFY
Similar phenomenon occurs in England, where "the north" and "the south" always begin to the north/south of whoever is being asked. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENeCYwms-Cc>
Like everything south of 175th Street in Chicagoland is Downstate Illinois. Indianapolis is in the center of Indiana, so they call everything outside the inner ring of suburbs {first half of city name}-tucky, as in a pejorative reference to Kentucky.
"And as much as I would like to attend, l haven't been above 72nd Street in over a decade." —Jack Donaghy, 30 Rock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_United_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach_Bridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Bay_Veterans_Memorial_Br...
Unfortunately while the physical infrastructure was resilient, the business didn’t survive the university president’s conviction for bid rigging. Iirc like $150M of equipment was written off and sold as scrap.
> “Conventional treatment of wastewater at semiconductor plants had recycled anywhere from 40 percent to 70 percent of water used in their processes,” explains Govindan. “Some manufacturers still only recycle 40 percent of the water they use.”
> However, over the past two years Gradiant has been working with semiconductor plants, improving their water reuse so that they're able to recycle 98 percent of the water they use. So, instead of bringing in 10 million gallons of freshwater a day from outside, these new recycling technologies mean they need to draw only 200,000 gallons of water from outside the plant to operate.
Most of the rest of the area, outside the city limits (and a few surrounding towns that are connected with the Syracuse water system for legacy reasons), gets its water from Lake Ontario, which is where this plant’s water would be coming from as well.
If anyone is curious, I am happy to ramble on for quite a while about the municipal water systems of the greater Syracuse area (occupational hazard of a couple decades as a firefighter in the area).
When the area was first colonized by Europeans, the major hubs in the area were actually south of Syracuse, along the Seneca and Cherry Valley Turnpikes, which were the original east/west routes through the state, prior to the construction of the Erie Canal (the canal is a significant contributing reason Syracuse became the major settlement and the southern towns are just suburbs now). Due to those earlier settlements though, there were a number of water districts that predate the Syracuse city water district in the southern part of Onondaga County.
Those districts have now all been rolled into the county water authority, which coordinates with the Syracuse Department of Water to deliver water to the surrounding area.
Of interest to firefighting though, this patchwork of water districts that combined over time has resulted in a variety of different threads on fire hydrants, with "Syracuse Standard" and "National Standard" hydrants often being found within the same fire districts. Pretty much every fire truck/engine in the area carries adapters to convert from one to the other.
That sounds like a lot. It's like 20 Olympic swimming pools - 30 acre feet of water... That's about how much 7500 acres of farmland uses per day - a decent portion of which is actually just rain...
Is there an easy way to understand why they need THAT much water?
IIUC, there's about ~600 chips per wafer (depends on chip and wafer size), and a plant produces ~30,000 wafers per month. That's ~18M chips per month, or ~600,000 per day.
So each chip needs ~17 gallons of water?! These chips are TINY - like not even a cubic inch. Volumetrically, that's like 5000x as much water.
Why??
It's actually even worse than that now. With the massive influx of immigrants recently, there are now 2+ families sharing one apartment. It's turning into the worst of the ghettos in many areas. Traffic is worse than ever. GO trains are fuller than ever.
Many people are escaping to Alberta. No respite in sight
The dataset you linked to doesn't seem to show any of the chip fabs already operating in the US. Do you have any reason to believe that chip fabs (as they are run these days) are major polluters on par with other industries?
You’re free to live wherever you choose.
Basically any large concentration of people is going to result in businesses existing that produce air pollution.
Everything in life is trade-offs. It sure would be nice to live in pristine untouched nature but also somehow have all modern conveniences and also somehow have a high income that is most commonly found in cities...
Like yeah I'm sure some people can square that circle, but most people need to live in places with more pollution than the countryside so they can make a living.
You’re free to look at this data and say: “well, it doesn’t conclusively prove that living next to a chip fab is bad, so I’m fine with it.” That’s your right. You can live where ever you want. But the data suggests living near industrial sources of pollution is bad for your health. Without any data suggesting that living near a chip fab is neutral to our health, I think applying Occam’s razor is warranted.
Doesn't this directly contradict the incidence of cancer vs. distance to industrial pollution maps? Like you're literally many times more likely to get cancer if you live near a source of industrial pollution compared to other people who live in your same city but don't live right next to a source of industrial pollution.
Think about it like this: the volume of a sphere increases proportional to the radius cubed. That means the further you get from a source of pollution, the density of that pollution falls off by a cubic of the distance. That's quite a sharp drop off. So small sources of pollution may pose some risk, but due to the small amount of particulate combined with how fast the pollution drops off means it's not so dangerous. Very large sources of pollution, however, may be dangerous for some distance.
- Living in a sparsely populated area that is near a chip fab presents X health risks due to its specific kind of industrial pollution.
- Living in a densely populated city without a chip fab presents Y health risks associated with higher traffic, other kinds of businesses that produce air pollution, etc.
I would want to see X quantified against Y in order to make an apples to apples comparison here. If such a comparison is made, it seems likely to me that the health risks are similar. Hence, the only way to minimize your health risks is to live in a sparsely populated area that has no jobs. Anyplace with significant economic activity is likely to be hazardous to your health in some way.
And even if X is significantly more hazardous than Y, okay, then what? "Don't move there" is a lot less helpful than proposing regulations that minimize people's exposure to pollution while still letting us have chip fabs. The damn things need to be built somewhere for us to have nice things, so let's figure out how to do it right instead of just scaring people with (potentially) misleading stats.
For decades, the region has wanted for STEM employment opportunities. (It's the rust belt, a lot of industry moved away.) I get the impression Rochester weathered it better than Syracuse, even after the downfall of Kodak. Rochester feels a little more vibrant to visit. That said, to the extent Micron is willing to train people, I imagine they'll have an easier time hiring in Syracuse than a lot of other places.
[0] https://nyskiblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ncdc-ny-sno...
There's a reason housing is cheap and there is a net population outflow out of NYS.
My wife is from the area and I’ve been there dozens of times. It’s not as happening as a major city, but if you wanted to live in an affordable suburb outside a large-enough city, it would be a fine place to live.
That being said, there is a _lot_ of privilege in my complaint here. There are plenty of schools in less affluent areas where the idea of even requesting services would be laughable; there just aren't the resources to provide them. FM is frustrating because it _has_ the money, but fights hard to avoid using it.
I did. It's less about how far north, and a lot to do with the lake effect snow the area gets.
It's sometimes confusing how Americans repurposed city names wholesale without the "New" prefix. Most of them are tiny towns, as for example Paris, Texas made famous by the movie.
Of the larger ones, St Petersburg, Florida always weirds me out — it makes me think of Lenin giving a speech at Finland Station under palm trees, dressed in a white suit like Don Johnson.
They were all tiny towns when they were first named.
edit: looks like water and seismic activity are the leading suggestions?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/10/election-2020-democrats-repu...
FWIW, I think NYC is more restrictive than NY state on the gun stuff. At least I know some avid hunters from rural NY, I don't think they have any issues getting hunting rifles, maybe they had to fill out some paperwork or something.
It's easier to buy handguns in most European countries than in NYS, and that's not a good thing. The entire process is made to be incredibly time consuming, expensive and frustrating, enough that most people will just give up and not do it.
Background check: yes, fine. However, these need to be processed quickly to have any effect. If someone is flagged, don't we want to know that sooner rather than later, even if they're blocked from buying a firearm legally?
Submitting social media profiles: What defines social media? What happens if I forget a handle? Are political opinions now going to be a deciding factor in whether or not I can exercise a constitutional right?
No out-of-state licenses issue: There is no good reason for this. If I'm spending time (and money) in NYS, and can otherwise possess a firearm, why am I not allowed to do this when visiting?
No touching of a handgun without a pistol permit: Specifically targeted at making the process onerous. If you're interested in shooting, you need to go through this entire process, and will afterwards be allowed to carry a firearm in public, all before you've actually tried to shoot one (outside of the very basic live-fire training course). Potential law abiding gun owners are very very dissuaded by this.
Residency requirements: Again, no good reason. If I pass a background check, why do I need to live in X county for 3 years before I can buy or possess a firearm?
Drug testing: Nassau county now requires you to submit a urine sample within 14 days of receiving the permit application. The sample must go to a lab with a certain certification, and there are _none_ in NYS, and the fee is $400. If the test results arrive to the county after 14 days, or they claim they arrived too late? Start over and pay the fee again. This has to be repeated every 2 years.
On the topic of "the kind of gun you would want for mass murder": this is a boogeyman in the current media. There are ~400 deaths from _all_ semi-automatic rifles per year in the US, including suicides, justified shootings, murders, mass shootings, etc. There are tens to hundreds of millions of these weapons in circulation, yet so few deaths. More people drown in pools every year than die by rifle in the United States.
We should be looking at the causes of these mass shootings, not trying to make legal access to firearms logistically impossible for all but the wealthy and well-connected.
Of course, in classic New York fashion the laws are still weaponized against minority groups and local enemies of the county government, which is precisely the reason they were introduced a century ago.
Onondaga county is pretty decent on gun rights with regards to issuing pistol licenses quickly and having pro gun judges approve them, but you’re still within NYS which is a major headache. Would be better for companies to abandon the state altogether.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/...
To answer your actual question though, the major reasons are access to cheap water (Lake Ontario), cheap housing, cheap/green power (lots of hydro and nuclear in the area), and low seismic activity. The location they selected also has quick access to both I-90 and I-81, the major east/west and north/south routes through the state.
The whole "blue state" thing also helps (blue states invest more in education, infrastructure, etc)
They've been in ruby red Idaho for like 30 years now.
Edit: Actually they've been in Idaho since 1978. So 44 years now.