Data centers in Wasco County, Oregon: 1 project mapped

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

Google built its first data center in The Dalles in 2006, and it now takes about a third of the city's water, OPB reported in January 2026, up from 12 percent in 2012. The company completed another building in 2025 and planned one more in 2026. In 2021 the city signed two agreements with Google. One guaranteed the company a set amount of water each year to cool two new buildings. Under the other, Google transferred about $28.5 million in water infrastructure to the city. Google had previously argued that its water use was a trade secret, until The Oregonian/OregonLive sued for the records and the city settled. Google's Ben Townsend told OPB the company had been protecting the "physical security of assets that are critical to operations."

The Dalles is now asking Congress for 150 acres of the Mount Hood National Forest around its reservoir, so it can raise the dam and roughly triple storage to about 3,000 acre-feet without Forest Service environmental review. The project is expected to cost about $70 million. Rep. Cliff Bentz's bill has passed the House. "Google is really not a factor in this at all," Mayor Richard Mays said. OPB found, however, that the city's 2024 water master plan projects at least a million gallons a day for an unnamed industrial user, the same amount Google uses. The plan also forecasts residential water rates climbing 99 percent by 2036. "Obviously, the great driver of demand for water in The Dalles is Google," said John DeVoe of WaterWatch of Oregon. Environmental groups warn that more diversion from the Dog River, where threatened salmon and steelhead run, would warm the river. Mays and the city's retired public works director called OPB's story inaccurate. OPB published a line-by-line review, corrected one figure and stood by the reporting.

The money flows the other way through tax deals. OPB reported that Google's property taxes are discounted by 92 percent under its agreements with the city and Wasco County, and that it paid $7.3 million in 2025 including a community service fee. For 2025-26, one of Google's newest data centers generated $1.56 million in property taxes, a $2.5 million community service fee, a $5.76 million guaranteed annual payment and a one-time $3 million initial payment, according to the county assessor's report described by Columbia Community Connection. In August 2026 county commissioners took up an ordinance to put up to $15 million of those one-time revenues into an endowment that could not be spent until July 1, 2041. "These abatement programs are a one-time incentive designed to attract investment to the community, and the revenue received through them represents a one-time opportunity," Assessor Jill Amery wrote.

Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.