COLUMBUS, Ohio — Columbus has a lot of major water users, but none will compare to the amount of water Intel will use per day.
According to the city water department, Ohio State uses 2.8 millions of gallons of water per day. Anheuser Busch consumes 2.3 million gallons and Abbot Labs takes in 1.1 million gallons.
Then there's Intel which told the city it will initially need 5 million gallons of water per day. That's nearly the amount that Gahanna uses.
Water is the lifeblood for a growing city and Columbus is blessed with an abundance of it. The question is how to make it last as demand for it grows.
"While we are blessed with abundant water, we also have to be mindful that there is a finite amount of water," said Kristen Atha Director of Columbus Department of Public Utilities.
The announcement of Intel to New Albany forced Columbus to rethink how quickly it needed to add a fourth water plant.
Vacant land at the corner of Home Road and Dublin Road is where the estimated $300 million water plant will go.
The state is contributing $50 million to the project because of the escalated timeline.
The new water plant is expected to be online by 2028, three years after Intel starts production.
In the meantime, the city's Hap Cremean Water Plant will provide the water.
"We can supply that initial need, but we also want to make sure that we have the capacity not just for intel but the growth that is related to Intel," says Atha.
How customer water rates will be impacted in the future remains unclear.
"We do have rate increases sometimes I don't know what the rate increase will look like once this plant is online," says Atha.
As Columbus' population continues to grow around Intel's New Albany plant, more water will be needed to fuel the growth of Intel and other developments that will follow.
The question for the city is how to balance it all?
"Water is a finite resource and so we always want to be thinking about how to protect our water supply and pay attention to the safe yield that we can take out," said Atha.
Intel will pay more for Columbus water than those who live in the city limits. Customers outside Columbus pay 1.3 times the city rate.
The city says Intel's 5 million gallons of water per day, equates to about 3.5% of the city's water.