Hyper-scaling and Slow Violence: A Story of Sickness in Oregon
Like power lines or sewage systems, data centers are now a key part of municipal life. Since the advent of the internet, the ever-expanding digital world has become the host of the fortresses we are socially obliged to participate in. As technological progress accelerates, new creations like generative AI require an increasing amount of resources from these centers, diverting more power and water away from surrounding communities and channeling it into hubristic endeavors, such as Meta’s new data center in Louisiana. While alarms must certainly be raised about the current exploitative practices of the technology sector, the long-term effects of data centers on public life will become just as pressing in the near future. This future looks increasingly dangerous to human health, as a recent report by the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN) found that rural Morrow County in Oregon has been suffering from the long-term effects of one of Amazon’s “hyperscale” data centers. First opened in 2011, these 10,000-square-foot warehouses were seen as an economic boon for the rural county, generating over $100 million in commercial taxes for the county and sparking a local rush to accept tax breaks for the company if more were opened (FERN). This led to the creation of seven datacenters in the county, with five more planned to open (FERN). The prosperity these warehouses brought was soon replaced with pollution, as these highly water-dependent buildings aggravated existing issues surrounding wastewater treatment from local megafarms. Thus, local wastewater lagoons had increased nitrate levels in regional water supplies over 73 parts per million (ppm), a far cry from the state standard limit of 7 ppm (FERN). The Amazon datacenters added another vector to the already polluted system, drastically increasing the amount of contaminated water created within these lagoons (FERN). By 2022, over 200 homes were found to have nitrate levels above the state’s limit in their water supply, with an increase in cancer cases and miscarriages in seemingly healthy people (FERN). Stories like Morrow County’s offer a glimpse into some of the problems datacenters will bring in the near future. Not only do citizens ned to worry about where their water is coming from, but also if it is even drinkable. In rural counties like Morrow, where poverty is more prevalent, access to clean drinking water is even more imperative. In Morrow, 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line, and 30 percent of residents live in mobile homes that rely on easily contaminated well water (FERN).
Morrow County’s story mirrors the themes explored in Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence, which focuses on how environmental issues disproportionately affect poor and marginalized communities, often in timeframes so slow that they seem innocuous. The saga of Morrow County’s water aligns with Nixon’s description of “displacement without moving,” as citizens lose access to key resources and are alienated from the land they stand on (Nixon 19). Citizens already living in poverty aren’t directly forced out of their land by Amazon or large farms, but are implicitly stripped of their right to live in good health on their land, as the environment around them has become merely a tool to be manipulated by corporate interests. Slowly, citizens who can't afford bottled or filtered water will face more and more health risks at younger and younger ages, a prime example of Nixon’s “slow violence.” Users of Amazon’s many services worldwide become complicit in what Nixon calls an “occluded relationship,” where consumers of Amazon products are disconnected from the harm their usage causes to people in places like Morrow County (Nixon 46). Thus, Amazon can remain dubiously culpable in the eyes of the general public regarding environmental issues. Thankfully, Nixon’s book offers examples of ways to combat slow violence, with Chapter Five’s discussion of community organization against large corporate infrastructure projects, such as megadams. When faced with similar threats to their livelihoods, indigenous tribes in Brazil banded together to create an international opposition that stopped progress on a hydroelectric project that would displace several tribes (Nixon 174). With intense community activism, combined with state regulations such as the recent energy rate increases in Missouri, there is a future where governments and citizens can collaborate to prevent ecological harm. It is also the public’s duty to recognize the long-term environmental effects that large tech corporations have, even when they are physically distant. Otherwise, without sustained community and state support, counties like Morrow are left to suffer at the hands of corporations that extract from the environment without any recompense.
Works Cited
Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. First Harvard University Press paperback edition, Harvard University Press, 2013. K10plus ISBN.
“‘The Precedent Is Flint’: How Oregon’s Data Center Boom Is Supercharging a Water Crisis.” Food and Environment Reporting Network, 25 Nov. 2025, https://thefern.org/2025/11/the-precedent-is-flint-how-oregons-data-center-boom-is-supercharging-a-water-crisis/.