<a href="https://datacenters.google/discover-more/photo-gallery/" rel="nofollow">https://datacenters.google/discover-more/photo-gallery/ and scroll down to "The Dalles, Oregon" and well... look at them.
> Google’s water use in The Dalles has nearly tripled in the past five years, and the company’s data centers now consume more than a quarter of all the water used in the city.
> That’s according to records released this week after the city settled a lawsuit against The Oregonian/OregonLive and agreed to hand over data on Google’s water consumption. The company’s water use is poised to continue soaring in the years ahead, as Google has plans for two more data centers along the Columbia River.
> Google is contemplating two new server farms on the site of a former aluminum smelter in The Dalles, where it already has an enormous campus of data centers on its property along the Columbia River.
> Google says it needs more water to cool its data centers, but neither the company nor the city will say how much more – only that The Dalles can’t meet Google’s needs without expanding its water system. The deal calls for Google to pay for the upgrade.
> Even so, the proposed water pact has attracted scrutiny and skepticism in The Dalles, a riverfront city of about 15,000 approximately 80 miles east of Portland.
> Residents and nearby farmers are concerned about the city’s long-term water supply amid an ongoing drought. They complain they don’t know enough about Google’s actual water use.
----
It is possible to do some cooling with closed cycle, though more than a few data centers have been built with open cycle cooling in places were the water table is precarious or in parts of the country under drought conditions.
Unless a data center construction discloses its water use and shows that it isn't using a lot, then people are assuming its using as much as it can (and up to the water rights or capacity that it has). ... Which isn't an unreasonable assumption to make.
> Google’s data centers gulped down nearly 550 million gallons of water in The Dalles in 2025. That’s nearly 40% of all the water consumed in the entire city and a huge jump from the year before.
> The city expects that local water consumption will soar over the next several years and bills will nearly double as The Dalles works to upgrade its aging water system. But the city won’t say how much of the rising demand comes from Google, citing a promise to keep the numbers secret and confidentiality provisions in Oregon public records law.
And data centers are being very cagy with their water consumption because the amount of water that it uses is related to the amount of compute it has and that is being held as an industry secret.
The opposition to a data center isn't "data center vs all of the state" but rather "data center vs a town where it will double the water use and the locals are currently under water restrictions and there was a drought last year."
Sure, let's do a more local comparison. Wasco County, where the Dalles is located:
Irrigation: 17.9B gallons/year
Fisheries: 9.7B gallons/year
So, the datacenter at the Dalles uses a shocking 2% of the amount of water used for irrigation alone in the locality.
There's a very simple solution to this, if you actually care about water: tax it to the point where usage is at whatever level you want, instead of focusing on a vanishing minority of the water usage.
> When Google purchased a defunct aluminum smelter in The Dalles, it also acquired the right to pump massive amounts of water from underground — up to 3.88 million gallons a day. That’s almost as much water as the entire city averaged per day in 2024.
> The corporation transferred those water rights to the city in 2021, Bentz noted, allowing The Dalles to pump more water from underground. The city only obtained part, not all, of the former smelter’s water rights, Mays said after OPB’s story published.
> But groundwater is limited — there is only so much available before it’s replenished by rain or snowmelt. Oregon is one of many states that have allocated more water rights than the earth can provide at once, causing groundwater wells for residents, farmers and other businesses to run dry — particularly in Eastern and Central Oregon.
---
The water rights that Google retained are not taxable without redoing the entirety of the water rights laws for multiple states.
Do water rights need to be revisited in today's climate conditions? Yes. We see it on the Colorado River... and on the Columbia River. But the law, as it stands today, if you've got the water rights that's not something that is taxable. And if you bought more senior water rights, you get to pump before someone else does.
scarmig · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
johnsmith1840 · · focus · HN ↗
shagie · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://datacenters.google/discover-more/photo-gallery/" rel="nofollow">https://datacenters.google/discover-more/photo-gallery/ and scroll down to "The Dalles, Oregon" and well... look at them.
And then its reported water use:
<a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-water-use-is-soaring-in-the-dalles-records-show-with-two-more-data-centers-to-come.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-wa...
> Google’s water use in The Dalles has nearly tripled in the past five years, and the company’s data centers now consume more than a quarter of all the water used in the city.
> That’s according to records released this week after the city settled a lawsuit against The Oregonian/OregonLive and agreed to hand over data on Google’s water consumption. The company’s water use is poised to continue soaring in the years ahead, as Google has plans for two more data centers along the Columbia River.
<a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2021/11/the-dalles-sues-to-keep-googles-water-use-a-secret.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2021/11/the-dalles...
> Google is contemplating two new server farms on the site of a former aluminum smelter in The Dalles, where it already has an enormous campus of data centers on its property along the Columbia River.
> Google says it needs more water to cool its data centers, but neither the company nor the city will say how much more – only that The Dalles can’t meet Google’s needs without expanding its water system. The deal calls for Google to pay for the upgrade.
> Even so, the proposed water pact has attracted scrutiny and skepticism in The Dalles, a riverfront city of about 15,000 approximately 80 miles east of Portland.
> Residents and nearby farmers are concerned about the city’s long-term water supply amid an ongoing drought. They complain they don’t know enough about Google’s actual water use.
----
It is possible to do some cooling with closed cycle, though more than a few data centers have been built with open cycle cooling in places were the water table is precarious or in parts of the country under drought conditions.
Unless a data center construction discloses its water use and shows that it isn't using a lot, then people are assuming its using as much as it can (and up to the water rights or capacity that it has). ... Which isn't an unreasonable assumption to make.
<a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2026/04/more-oregon-water-for-googles-data-centers-more-concern-over-secrecy.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2026/04/more-orego...
> Google’s data centers gulped down nearly 550 million gallons of water in The Dalles in 2025. That’s nearly 40% of all the water consumed in the entire city and a huge jump from the year before.
> The city expects that local water consumption will soar over the next several years and bills will nearly double as The Dalles works to upgrade its aging water system. But the city won’t say how much of the rising demand comes from Google, citing a promise to keep the numbers secret and confidentiality provisions in Oregon public records law.
And data centers are being very cagy with their water consumption because the amount of water that it uses is related to the amount of compute it has and that is being held as an industry secret.
scarmig · · focus · HN ↗
Compare:
> Annual water withdrawals in Oregon since 1985 have ranged from 7.3M to 9.4M acre-feet (AF)
<a href="https://www.oregon.gov/owrd/WRDPublications1/230721_FINAL_Business_Case_for_Water_in_OR.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.oregon.gov/owrd/WRDPublications1/230721_FINAL_Bu...
Note that 7.3M acre-feet is equal to 2.3T gallons. 550M/2.3T = 0.02%
shagie · · focus · HN ↗
scarmig · · focus · HN ↗
Irrigation: 17.9B gallons/year
Fisheries: 9.7B gallons/year
So, the datacenter at the Dalles uses a shocking 2% of the amount of water used for irrigation alone in the locality.
There's a very simple solution to this, if you actually care about water: tax it to the point where usage is at whatever level you want, instead of focusing on a vanishing minority of the water usage.
shagie · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/15/as-googles-water-demands-grow-the-dalles-aims-to-pull-more-from-mount-hood-forest/" rel="nofollow">https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/15/as-googles-water-dema...
> When Google purchased a defunct aluminum smelter in The Dalles, it also acquired the right to pump massive amounts of water from underground — up to 3.88 million gallons a day. That’s almost as much water as the entire city averaged per day in 2024.
> The corporation transferred those water rights to the city in 2021, Bentz noted, allowing The Dalles to pump more water from underground. The city only obtained part, not all, of the former smelter’s water rights, Mays said after OPB’s story published.
> But groundwater is limited — there is only so much available before it’s replenished by rain or snowmelt. Oregon is one of many states that have allocated more water rights than the earth can provide at once, causing groundwater wells for residents, farmers and other businesses to run dry — particularly in Eastern and Central Oregon.
---
The water rights that Google retained are not taxable without redoing the entirety of the water rights laws for multiple states.
Do water rights need to be revisited in today's climate conditions? Yes. We see it on the Colorado River... and on the Columbia River. But the law, as it stands today, if you've got the water rights that's not something that is taxable. And if you bought more senior water rights, you get to pump before someone else does.