Vantage seeks permission to use well water

The Port Washington Board of Public Works next week will consider a request by Vantage Data Centers to operate wells on its property during construction of its Lighthouse Campus.

The Vantage request will be taken up along with requests from other property owners to continue operating private wells in the city, Public Works Director Rob Vanden Noven said.

City Engineer Roger Strohm said the city code allows property owners to continue to use wells that were in existence before May 1, 2023.

Five or six other property owners in the city also have wells on their land, he said.

“Our big concern is to make sure the well is not connected to the municipal water system,” Strohm said, and the four wells Vantage wants to use will not be.

Mark Freeman, Vantage’s vice president of global marketing, said the firm plans to use two existing wells to support temporary trailers on the site north of Lake Drive that will be used as offices during construction.

“The existing pumps will remain in place and not be upsized,” he said.

Water from the wells will feed two 6,000-gallon holding tanks with a maximum daily draw of about 12,000 gallons, Freeman said.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American family of four uses 400 gallons of water a day.

“These wells will be used only for the duration of construction,” he added. “Longer term, site water service will come from city water lines, not from the wells or aquifer.”

Freeman noted that the trailers are not being used as worker housing but only as offices.

“Vantage does have a great deal of construction trailers being assembled, however there are no living quarters within the trailer city compounds nor anywhere on site,” he said. “We have hundreds of field operations staff working daily from the buildings. The trailers are strictly offices, open conference rooms, etc.”

Strohm said that Vantage has told the city the wells will be operated essentially as they always have been.

“Essentially nothing’s changed,” he said, adding that once the city is able to service the data center site with city water, the wells will be abandoned.

Strohm said he does not believe use of these wells will impact neighboring properties.

“My professional opinion is they’re far enough away (from the neighbors) that they won’t impact anyone else,” he said.

Vantage has also applied to the Department of Natural Resources for a permit to operate high-capacity wells, a request the DNR is reviewing.

The agency has requested additional information on the application and is waiting for that to be submitted, a DNR spokesman said.

“When we review high capacity well applications, we consider ... the ability of those wells to cause potential harm to waters of the state (private wells, municipal wells, streams, lakes, wetlands, etc),” the spokesman said.

According to a DNR spokesman, the wells will run for 18 to 24 months and then be filled and sealed.

Freeman said that Vantage is seeking the permit because the DNR considers all the Vantage-owned wells as one, “not because Vantage expects high-capacity use in practice.”

Strohm said when the capacity of the individual wells Vantage will operate on the site is totaled, it reaches the definition of a high-capacity well.

“If you have one 20-gallon per hour well at your house, you’re fine,” he said. But because Vantage has four, they cross the threshold of a 70-gallon per hour high capacity well.