Microsoft Goodyear data center, Goodyear, Arizona

Microsoft's Goodyear data center campus in Arizona, on nearly 300 acres south of MC 85 and Phoenix Goodyear Airport in Maricopa County, is planned for five buildings, and how to cool them in the desert has shaped the project since Microsoft bought the site in 2018. By March 2023 Microsoft had developed a 290,000-square-foot building, had a second of 250,000 square feet being built and planned to start a third of the same size soon, AZBEX reported.

Water cooling for the whole campus would have needed up to 5 million gallons a day delivered to the site, and the city did not have the sewer line or wastewater plant capacity to take the company's wastewater. The Goodyear City Council voted unanimously for a revised development agreement on March 6, 2023, requiring the fourth and fifth buildings to be air cooled instead of using direct evaporative cooling.

Microsoft agreed to pay $36 million toward an estimated $90 million expansion of the city's 157th Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant, which gives it 1.2 million gallons a day of capacity at full build-out, plus a $5 million deposit toward a new sewer line and $800,000 for a city coordinator. It was the third revision of the agreement.

How much water the campus actually uses is not public. The Atlantic reported in March 2024 that, at full build-out, Microsoft estimates the data center could use up to 56 million gallons a year, but that the city and state cannot disclose the amount, according to the Goodyear Independent. The Independent said city documents suggested those projections could be optimistic.

Microsoft is growing elsewhere in Goodyear too; in 2026 it paid $131 million for 100 acres next to a 150-acre Microsoft campus under development near Citrus and Indian School roads, bringing its footprint in the area to more than 550 acres, DCD reported, citing CoStar. Vantage, Compass, Stack, QTS and Prime also operate in Goodyear, and Microsoft is building another campus in El Mirage.

Decisions on the campus's water and sewer terms rest with the Goodyear City Council, which has revised the development agreement three times. No newer water-use figures for the campus have been published since April 2024.