Amazon VP on natural resources and data centers in Eastern Oregon

There are over 130 data centers across Oregon. In the eastern part of the state, there are more than 50, many of which are owned and operated by Amazon Web Services. The tech-giant has brought millions to cities such as Hermiston, allowing for renovations to its city hall and library. But the data centers have also drawn criticism from local advocates for their water and energy use and environmental impacts. Roger Wehner is the vice president of economic development for Amazon. He joins us to share his company’s perspective on data center investments in Oregon.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Last week, Democratic Oregon Governor Tina Kotek and her Republican challenger, State Senator Christine Drazan, both called for temporary moratoriums on new data centers in the state. It was a clear sign that the nationwide bipartisan backlash against data centers is having an effect on Oregon politics. Meanwhile, the huge footprint of the existing data centers in Oregon is already likely to get much bigger. Earlier this year, Amazon bought 1,300 acres of land near Boardman that would be by far the largest data center complex in the state.

As you might have heard, we recently spent a week in Hermiston near the epicenter of Amazon’s data center operations. We did invite Amazon to join us while we were there. We did not get a response, but after we got back to Portland, they said that they would be happy to talk, and we’re gonna have that conversation right now. Roger Wehner is the vice president of economic development for Amazon. Welcome to the show.

Roger Wehner: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I’m sorry I couldn’t join you in the region.

Miller: I am thrilled that we have you on now. I want to start with the big political news, news that had not broken when we were in Boardman and in Hermiston. What went through your mind when Oregon Democratic Governor Tina Kotek and her Republican challenger Christine Drazan both called last week for temporary moratoriums on new data centers in the state?

Wehner: I mean, for us it’s an interesting political reaction. We don’t agree that moratoriums are the answer per se, but we do agree responsible data center development, that protecting ratepayers, safeguarding the environment, environmental responsibility and deliver a meaningful benefits to local communities is exactly the right way to go, and we feel pretty strongly that we’ve got a 15-year track record in Eastern Oregon of doing exactly that. So I think having a high bar is a great answer, but I don’t know if a moratorium is the right answer.

Miller: The governor also issued an order to state agencies last week to immediately pause unapproved requests for “easements, right of way leases, rentals, land use permits, and sales or transfers of state-owned property for data center projects.” Would any Amazon projects be affected by that? Because, to be clear, she’s talking there about state land, unlike, say, the private land that you already purchased outside of Boardman for the so-called exascale one. So, would any projects that you have in mind be affected by the governor’s order?

Wehner: Well, obviously we’re still evaluating all the implications of what’s being proposed, but I think it’s not just a question of us, I think it’s a question of the entire industry and the benefits that it brings, and I think at the end of the day things like that are just gonna make Oregon less competitive.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for Amazon’s existing footprint in Oregon for data centers?

Wehner: For sure. To date, I think… And I have the luxury, we’ve been in Oregon now for 15 years. I’ve been with the company for 10 of those years, and so I’ve seen us, in roughly that time period, invest approximately $55 billion in the state. We currently employ 2,500 people on a full-time basis in the state. We know we support about 9,500 other jobs in the state. That equates to about $15 billion worth of GDP impact in the state, and even when we’re in the construction phase, you’re talking about 4,000 to 6,000 workers. And what we’ve found in our 15 years of experience is 80% of those construction hours sourced are all from local vendors and companies, so we think those are all significant impacts in the community.

But that doesn’t even get to the tax benefits and payments that we make in the community, which is something we’re very proud of. I think in 2025 alone, our local property tax payments and fees were $71.3 million. We’re the largest taxpayer in both counties, and it’s important, I think, for your listeners to understand, because that also means we’re involved in the bond issues, so we’re paying 93% of the most recent city of Umatilla bond issue to finance a new police station. Morrow County just floated $204 million worth of school bonds, in 2025 we’ll pay over $70 million of that.

I mean, the relationship goes, there’s the jobs piece, and that’s easy to get your head around, that’s a simple number. Then the investments in infrastructure, so $400 million dollars in water recently, to improve local water infrastructure. The investments we’re making in just churning $55 billion worth of investment in the community, we’re putting a lot of local contractors to work. And then the workforce development and community partnerships that we have. We have a 15-year track record of building our workforce locally in that region through Blue Mountain Community College, the school systems, etc. So the depth and breadth of that 15 year relationship, we like to believe we’ve been a great corporate citizen and want to continue to do that.

Miller: Where do plans for the so-called exascale data center in Boardman stand? This is the nearly 1,300 acre plan outside of Boardman.

Wehner: Yeah, it’s a great question. I would tell you it’s a big parcel of land, but we always try to grow, how do I say, like commensurate with the community. So, we don’t envision, in our mind, anything different than what we’ve already done in the communities and have agreed with. So, a four-building campus, which if you were in town, you saw how those four-building campuses play out. That’s the way we probably envision developing that site. Now, over the term we could do several of those probably on that campus, but we’ve never envisioned that as being, as you said, 1,300 acres from border to border, data centers.

Miller: Well, this is how Mike Rogoway in The Oregonian described it in an article about five months ago: “Planning documents submitted to Morrow County last year describe a hypothetical one-gigawatt facility with as many as 20 buildings spread over four million square feet. The project could be three times bigger than the Washington Square Mall in Tigard.” So, are you saying that currently you don’t have plans for a complex of that scale, or are you saying that a complex of that scale is not at all in the cards?

Wehner: Well, what I’m saying is that site would accommodate, I mean, you always write your maximum potential utility of acreage. But what I’m saying is that our current vision and our partnership with those communities is not to do something on that scale, and to grow incrementally like we have for 15 years in the region, that kind of four-building campus approach.

Miller: More broadly, if I had told you, say two years ago, that skepticism of data centers or even animosity towards them would become a nationwide bipartisan issue in the midterm elections, what would you have said?

Wehner: Well, without a doubt, I think your 24 months is really apt. The last 24 months have seen a lot of introspection and a lot of content out there that I think is helping to fuel that introspection. And look, I’ve been in economic development for 30-plus years, maybe longer than that, I just don’t wanna admit it. But in that time, I haven’t seen a mega project or large projects not raise questions in communities, and we always welcome that.

Again, I go back to where we started this conversation. People have questions, they have questions about a lot of the topics that are things that we hold near and dear, in terms of responsible development. And we’re eager to have those conversations. As a matter of fact, I was just looking, we’ve held 20-plus some open houses all around the country, in the communities, and we’re keenly interested in being more transparent than we ever have. We view it as a good thing.

Our transparency has increased, not because we weren’t doing it before, but because that wasn’t the environment. The environment’s changed, we’re listening, we’re being responsive. For example, in Oregon in particular, we are reporting openly all of our water usage, so we’re adapting with the times and the requests of the community, and we view that as a good thing. We’re trying to meet the community exactly where it’s at.

Miller: The phrase that Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has latched on to for her approach to data centers going forward is that, in her words, “We have to stop being a cheap date.” Has the nationwide pushback – in many quarters, it’s not universal, but it is bipartisan and it is over a very broad geographic area – has it affected the negotiations that you have with various municipalities? Has it made it so you see cities or counties or economic development agencies asking you to strike tougher deals?

Wehner: I don’t think so. I think because we’ve always crafted super mutually beneficial relationships with the communities, I mean, I don’t wanna bore your listeners again with all the data on how much we’re contributing. Look, the types of deals that you’re talking about were expressly created, and not just for the data center industry, but multiple industries out there, to attract industry, to attract high wage paying jobs, and increase the quality of life of citizens in the community consistent with their economic development strategy.

All these tools exist out there and they exist around the country. What we found is we’ve always met those bars and exceeded those bars, and we’ve been a great partner with the communities that we’re engaged with. I think you may have heard that while you were out in the region, so we’re excited about these opportunities to partner with communities and make them mutually beneficial, and help them tackle their biggest challenges, address infrastructure challenges, and to make a better quality of life for their citizens.

Miller: I absolutely heard that from a couple of people when we were there. We also heard about environmental concerns or cultural concerns, and folks can listen to all those conversations. I don’t need to get into all those issues today with you, but I recommend folks can listen to the week of shows from Boardman, Hermiston, some of which were about data centers.

I wanna stick though, with the bigger picture. How big is the demand from your customers right now? And when I say customers, I mean the folks who rely on or want you to build more data centers. What’s demand like?

Wehner: Yeah, our CEO has been quite open about this. We are seeing an increase in consistent demand year over year from our customers, and a lot of it, the major corporations of the world, even down to governments, as well as hospitals, etc., that we’re seeing an increased demand from. I’ll give you a very localized example. Recently, Portland General Electric migrated to Amazon Web Services from an on-premises data center, in part to help them respond to storms that caused a lot of unprecedented damage lately, and we helped PG&E serve their customers five times faster and in a volume five times more than what they were able to do before with that on-premises solution.

And, as me, as a person who, when you flip that switch, you want it to be there, the power to be there. I want my utility to focus on delivering the power that we all need and have become reliant on, and not worrying about owning and operating data centers. I think PG&E is a great example of what our customer demand looks like, and how that plays out in reality in communities all around the world, and in the case of Eastern Oregon, the Pacific Northwest and the west coast in general.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for, since you brought PG&E up as a customer, the scale of what they require in a data center?

Wehner: Oh, great question. I just don’t have the answer to it. That’s a whole customer question that I wouldn’t be able to answer for you. I apologize.

Miller: Then let’s stick with the bigger picture. Is it fair to say that AI is the biggest driver for your data center business and data center construction now?

Wehner: I would say no, and let me explain why. Again, we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary, and like I said, I’ve been here for 10 of those years, and our customers have made us one of the most broadly adopted clouds around the world for much of our time in this industry.

Miller: When you say 20, that’s Amazon Web Services. The cloud/data holding and moving around piece of the entire Amazon corporation, but AWS is what we’re talking about here.

Wehner: Correct.

Miller: OK, so please go on.

Wehner: So you’ve got 20 years of experience in doing this work, and on that we’ve built 220-plus fully provisioned services that all of our millions of customers have learned to love and use every day and have made us, fortunately, the most broadly adopted cloud in the world. When AI came along, what it helped our customers do in many ways, is use those 220 fully provisioned services even easier, faster, deploy them better from inside their organizations.

I’m not a coder, that’s not what I do, but even in my business previously, when I went to use applications, I always struggled with the technical side of coding to tailor them to my business. Well, what you’re seeing with AI is you don’t have to be a coder anymore. You can go to our services and you can tell them the things you want them to do, and then AI helps tailor exactly what they’ve already used us for to their specific business, and more importantly, adopt more use cases more rapidly at scale. And that’s where I think a big chunk of our customer demand is coming from. So, it’s kind of a no, but yes, but sort of, like, it’s a dish of all things.

Miller: A few days ago, the Harvard Business Review wrote this:

“As the financial press dials up estimates of total investment in data centers from hundreds of billions to, lately, several trillion dollars, the fear of compute overcapacity, low or negative returns, and a recession escalates.” How worried are you about the AI bubble popping?

Wehner: I can’t speak for the rest of the industry, nor can I speak for our competitors. All I can speak for is us, and I’m sure you’ve looked at our returns and the way other folks evaluate our business, and like I just said, we have strong, consistent growing customer demand, not for just the new novelty of AI but to use AI, to better use what they’ve already been using from us for 20-plus years now. And we see that, like I said, that strong, consistent demand, and so we’re keeping on pace with where our customers want us to be, and making sure, again, when they flip that switch and they need that capacity, it’s there for them. But again, we do that via responsible development.

Miller: What would happen, do you think, to this infrastructure and these communities that have become increasingly reliant on fees or jobs or the other economic benefits that they are getting from Amazon right now, and other data center companies, but what would happen to the communities and the infrastructure if it turns out that you’re wrong?

Wehner: Well, I don’t think that the cloud is gonna go away, and I don’t think AI is gonna go away. So I think that the most important thing for communities, having been, again, an economic developer for a long time, and had to qualify my leads and have very strong opinions and vetting my business partners that I brought into the community, I just think the rigor around finding the right business partners is more important than ever.

Because any economic development project that can come to a community, I mean, you and I are probably both aware of steel mills that were sited all around, and when tariffs changed and industries went away, be that pulp and paper, be it steel, be it other major heavy industries, went away, everybody had to react to that. But I think what we’re seeing, and so you have to be very… but not all of them did.

And so I think it’s very important to have a high bar when you vet your economic development prospects and you deal with companies, and there’s also ways, and we do this proactively, communities, where we can protect them against long-term obligations and things that may happen, which we think is super important, because it doesn’t behoove us in any way to do any harm to our partner communities. Quite the contrary, the most important thing for us is to help them thrive, be successful, and achieve their economic development ambitions, and that’s exactly how we try to structure our deals.

Miller: Roger Wehner, thanks very much.

Wehner: Thank you for your time, sir.

Miller: Roger Wehner is a vice president of economic development for Amazon.

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