West Lafayette OKs sewage expansion, divvies up SK hynix tax revenue - Journal & Courier

The West Lafayette sewage upgrade is not municipal trivia—it is the moment SK hynix's Indiana HBM line crosses from blueprint to wet-test. A single 12-inch DRAM/HBM fab consumes over 50,000 gallons of process water daily, with effluent standards far exceeding conventional industrial thresholds. Local infrastructure capacity has quietly become a binding constraint on yield ramp, rivaling the strategic weight of EUV delivery schedules. The published tax-revenue split exposes a deeper political economy: post-CHIPS Act, municipalities have shifted from gatekeepers to equity stakeholders in chip output. This mirrors TSMC's Arizona last-mile friction in 2022–2024, where federal capital arrived 18–24 months ahead of county-level water, power, and waste readiness. For Samsung and Micron, the competitive frontier has migrated from node shrinkage to who solves the water-power-effluent triad first. Over the next 12–24 months, expect a new class of chip-infrastructure contractors to emerge across the Midwest. If SK hynix locks HBM4 volume production by 2026, its pricing leverage in the US market will directly dismantle Micron's domestic-substitution narrative.