Residents of The Dalles, Oregon, will soon know how much water Google’s data centers there have been using to cool the computers
FILE - The exterior of a Google data center is pictured in The Dalles, Ore., on Oct. 5, 2021. Residents of The Dalles should soon know how much of their water Google's data centers there have been using to cool the computers, after a lawsuit seeking to keep the information confidential was dropped. Data centers around the world help people stream movies, store trillions of photos and conduct daily business online, but a single facility can churn through millions of gallons of water per day.
The Dalles Mayor Richard Mays said Google had previously insisted its water usage in The Dalles was a trade secret because the company was concerned about competitors knowing how it cools its servers, but then changed its position and agreed to release the water records for The Dalles.In a settlement filed Wednesday with Wasco County Circuit Court, The Dalles agreed to provide 10 years of water use data for Google and to provide annual water usage in future years, the newspaper reported.
Mays and Public Works Director Dave Anderson did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.The decision to back off the lawsuit came even as Google has been considering building two new data centers in The Dalles. The town lies along the mighty Columbia River, but the new data centers wouldn’t be able to use that water and instead would have to take water from rivers and groundwater that has gone through the city’s water treatment plant.
Dawn Rasmussen, who lives on the outskirts of The Dalles, has seen the level of her well water drop year after year and worried that sooner or later it would fall short.Town councilors voted unanimously in November 2021 to approve Google's proposal to build two new data centers, even though the 15,000 town residents didn't know how much water the proposed data centers would use.
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