Atlas Agro data center (Richland), Richland, Washington

Atlas Agro, a fertilizer company, wants to build a data center beside the nitrate plant it is planning at Richland, in Benton County, Washington. It would put five buildings of 500,000 square feet each on about 275 acres in the Northwest Advanced Clean Energy Park, north of Horn Rapids Road and across from Framatome, at a cost of $500 million, employing more than 100 people, with construction starting in 2027.

The fertilizer plant is the bigger half. Atlas Agro's $1 billion nitrate plant on 150 acres at the Horn Rapids Industrial Park would make 700,000 tons a year and need 320 megawatts, and it is meant to employ 200 people. Chief executive Petter Ostbo named the constraint on both: "It's the power that's the limiting factor, both for the fertilizer plant and for the potential data center." Dan Holmes, the company's president for North America, put the relationship between the two the other way round: "We don't see a data center as a separate business, but as a partner that helps us build the necessary power and utility infrastructure for the site," he told the council committee, adding that the approach "puts us on an expedited path to getting the fertilizer plant up and running." Both wait on Bonneville Power Administration grid upgrades expected within three years.

Seven of the eight members present at Richland's economic development committee meeting on October 20 voted to recommend the agreement to the council. The council approved it unanimously on December 2, 2025: an option, not a sale, giving Atlas Agro a year to decide, against a nonrefundable fee of $250,000 and a price just under $24 million for the 275 acres at 2100 Horn Rapids Road if it goes ahead. Karl Dye, who runs the Tri-City Development Council, tied it to the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission and its seventeen national laboratories.

What that option turned out to mean became clear in July 2026, when residents asked Richland for the kind of data center moratorium Pasco had adopted the day before. City manager Jon Amundson told them it was not available: "Because an option agreement is in effect, imposing a moratorium is not possible." Richland resident Kayla Madsen told the council its approach seemed to break the Atlas Agro question into small pieces to make it "sweet and palatable," and accused it of ignoring concerns about infrastructure, water, noise and utility rates. Amundson said federal deed restrictions already apply to the land and that the city meant to add binding conditions of its own, and that several steps remain before any sale: a purchase agreement back before the council, and building permits after that.