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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

Don't chip fabs require a great deal of water? Wondering why a place like Arizona, with serious water issues, was selected.

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According to TSMC: "To achieve our goal of 90% water reclamation, We will build an advanced water treatment facility (Industrial Water Reclamation Plant) at our Phoenix operation with a design goal of achieving “Near Zero Liquid Discharge”. This means the fabs will be capable of using nearly every drop of water back into the facility."

While they reclaim 90% of the water, given the immense amount of water they use, it's still an exorbitant amount.

With all 6 fabs online, and water reclamation in place, it's expected to be the equivalent of 160,000 homes:

https://www.phonearena.com/news/tsmc-access-to-water-us-fabs...

Now you can and absolutely should (IMO) make the argument that the fabs are far more important than the agricultural use in the area which is far more wasteful. But someone has to step up and do that and none of the politicians in the area seem to have been willing to make a commonsense decision and say: we're done growing crops in the desert when we've got endless better options.

Be easier just for Arizona to stop growing alfalfa. Its popular because they can grow two crops. According to the feds, there is 300,000 acres of alfalfa in Arizona. Cut that you have enough water saved for tens of millions of people. growing water hungry crops in the desert doesn't make sense.

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Arizona/Public...

The nice thing about the desert Southwest is that the growing season is long and the climate is hot but stable. Water is the issue, but with irrigation, not as much.

Why not a place like Washington State or Oregon with abundant water and hydropower

Seismic activity appears to be at least one problem. The entire West coast of the contiguous US has lots of it.

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