SCIENCE / TECHNOLOGY : Western Digital Acting to Ensure Its Water Supply

Western Digital Corp., a manufacturer of computer components, is undertaking what it calls an “innovative” plan with the Irvine Ranch Water District to ensure that its wafer-manufacturing plant has a steady water supply despite the drought.

The company plans to explore the use of reclaimed water for its computer chip-making plant in the Irvine Spectrum business park,said Greg Heiertz, the water district’s director of water conservation.

The $119-million plant began its initial production of 6-inch semiconductor wafers on Monday, but it won’t be up to full production until sometime next year. That gives the company time to work out a way to pipe reclaimed water into the plant, Heiertz said.

“We don’t anticipate a problem serving Western Digital until we can bring the reclaimed water on line,” he said.

Western Digital’s semiconductor wafers are the basic building blocks for a variety of its electronic components. Plants which make the wafers need a steady supply of water, and in Northern California, a number of Silicon Valley manufacturers are facing cutbacks in their water allocations.

Heiertz said the district is building a pump station to get the reclaimed water to some of the water users in the business park. Western Digital’s plant, however, needs bigger pipe-lines to obtain adequate volumes of water.

In addition, the company will have to deal with the possibility of higher salt content in the reclaimed water. That would affect Western Digital’s purification process and the waste water that would be discharged back into the reclaimed water system.