Apple is applying to the City of Waukee in Iowa, just west of Des Moines, to return some of its land surrounding its iCloud data center back into a freshwater marsh, also known as a “prairie pothole,” reports AppleInsider.
Apple intends to create a wetlands restoration area on some of the land it won’t be using for future data centers and related facilities, the article adds. The affected area will comprise approximately 220 acres.
In August 2017 Apple announced that its next U.S. data center would be built in Iowa. The tech giant announced plans to build a 400,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art data center in Waukee, Iowa, to better serve North American users of iMessage, Siri, the App Store and other Apple services.
Like all Apple data centers, the facility will run entirely on renewable energy from day one. Construction began in 2022.
Apple’s investment of $1.3 billion is expected to create over 550 construction and operations jobs in the Des Moines area, and the company contributed up to $100 million to a newly created Public Improvement Fund dedicated to community development and infrastructure around Waukee.
