Taipei, May 9 (CNA) Internet giant Google denied on Monday a report that the company is facing water supply issues in its planned expansion of a data center in central Taiwan's Changhua County.

Google said in a statement Monday evening that its plan to expand the data centers, opened over two years ago, remains unchanged, and the project is a long-term commitment.

When Google's data center in Changhua was opened in December 2013, it was the company's largest facility in Asia with a total investment of US$600 million.

The statement was issued in response to a United Daily News report that the company halted the third phase of the data center project in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park over insufficient water supply.

The report said it would be the second investment setback Changhua County has suffered since Facebook, one of the world's largest online social networking services, announced last week it was putting on hold a planned data center in Changhua's Tianjhong Industrial Park.

Both the Water Resources Agency under the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Taiwan Water Corp., a state-run company supervised by the ministry, rebutted the report, saying that the park's water supply was adequate at present and would increase substantially when a water purification station is completed in late 2017.

Google said sustainable development has long been a key concern of the company's data center operations, and it will work with the government and other partners to ensure sustainable use of resources. 

(By Jeffrey Wu and Kay Liu)
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