On 7 May 2025, Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions announced a 16-year contract worth US$550 million to design, build, and operate a water and wastewater treatment facility for a semiconductor fab in the Midwestern U.S.—presumed to be for Intel’s Ohio campus, given the project’s location and size. The facility will utilize advanced treatment technologies such as ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis to support high-volume water reuse, critical to fab operations. The scale and duration of the contract underscore the growing complexity and value of water systems in semiconductor manufacturing.
At the federal level, mixed policy signals are complicating the investment environment. While the current administration has emphasized fiscal restraint and spending cuts to support other initiatives (i.e., tax reductions), these efforts run counter to the administration’s push for domestic supply chain resilience through manufacturing reshoring. Despite this political ambiguity, the rollout of CHIPS Act grant funding—including multibillion-dollar awards to TSMC, Intel, and Micron—is driving the construction of new U.S. semiconductor fabs. For water infrastructure providers like Veolia, this contradiction has so far translated into a sustained project flow as manufacturers prioritize operational readiness and risk mitigation over concerns about federal budget uncertainty.
