Foxconn's Wisconsin Plant Requires 7M Gallons of Water a Day

Last year, Foxconn pledged $10 billion for Wisconsin where the company will manufacture LCD panels for use in just about every product you can think of that needs a screen. The good news is, the investment should result in at least 3,000 new jobs, but potentially up to 13,000. However, manufacturing doesn't happen without the use of local resources, and it turns out Foxconn needs a lot of water. Millions of gallons in fact.

As Gizmodo reports, in order to manufacture LCD panels Foxconn requires seven million gallons of water every day from Lake Michigan . Around 39 percent of that is lost as evaporation during the manufacturing process. The rest will be used, treated, and then returned to the lake.

The request for the water by Foxconn was approved last week by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). It allows the city of Racine to "divert an annual average of 7 million gallons a day of water from Lake Michigan for its customers within the village of Mount Pleasant." The DNR also points out that seven million gallons "would only amount to a 0.07 percent increase in the total surface water withdrawals from Lake Michigan."

Seven million gallons on a daily basis does sound absolutely huge, but taken as a percentage of the water contained in the lake it's tiny. The concern coming from environmentalists is the precedent it sets for future requests for lots of water. Has the Foxconn decision opened the flood gates so to speak, of lake water being taken?

For now, Foxconn has approval to use the water, but not manufacturing plant exists yet.