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Could Amazon.com be the tenant in a massive $100 million data center arising along the Columbia River in Oregon?

That's the speculation in a story from the Oregonian, which reports that the  facility is being built on 60 acres near the town of Boardman. A 10-megawatt power substation also is reported to be part of the project.

The Oregonian quotes Port of Morrow Manager Gary Neal who says he has been directed to forward inquiries to Patricia Smith, who heads PR at the online retailer. She declined to comment in the story.

Amazon certainly needs data center space as its Web Services efforts -- hosted storage and database applications -- continue to gain traction.

Amazon isn't the only tech giant looking to take advantage of the cheap hydroelectric power of the Columbia River, with Google operating a massive facility in The Dalles, Oregon and Microsoft and others running facilities near Quincy, Wash.

You can get a sense of this desolate corner of the U.S. from the Port of Morrow's Web site, which shows photos of the area and touts some of the food processing (mainly potatoes and onion) that are handled near Boardman.

It is so desolate that the U.S. Army stores about 12 percent of the country's original chemical weapons -- including nerve and blister agents -- at the nearby Umatilla Chemical Depot.