A small town in Central Washington is Microsoft’s answer to the data center backlash

Quincy is a small farming town in Central Washington near the Columbia River, home to one of the world’s top french fry producers. It’s also the model for Microsoft’s nationwide data center strategy.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a series of commitments intended to assuage a growing backlash to the data center building boom. The company held up Quincy — where it has been building data centers for about 20 years — as an example of how communities could benefit from the massive infrastructure projects.

Under the plan, Microsoft says it will ask local utilities to charge rates high enough to cover data center energy usage and upgrade electrical infrastructure without raising prices for residents. The company plans to build new data centers using a closed-loop water system that recycles the water used to cool servers, rather than drawing on local reserves….