The Dalles, Oregon, USA (litigation over disclosure of Google data centre water use)
#00230
Case study of
#00223 Mandate per-facility energy and water reporting with a penalty attached, and bar NDAs covering utility impacts
Implementer
City of The Dalles and Google, opposed by The Oregonian / Oregon Live
Timeline
Jan 1, 2021 – Dec 1, 2022
Location
Description
A public records case documenting the cost of obtaining basic operating data without a mandatory register. The city of The Dalles litigated for 13 months to block a newspaper's public records request for Google's water consumption, with Google contributing over $100,000 toward the city's litigation costs. The city eventually dropped the suit and released the records. Released figures showed 355.1 million gallons consumed in 2021 (up from 124.2 million in 2017), equal to ~29% of the city's total water consumption; by 2025 Google's campuses reached ~550 million gallons/year, ~40% of municipal consumption. Google subsequently became the only major hyperscaler publishing site-level water consumption data, covering 36 cities.
Metrics
6Funding
Lessons learned
- The figure at issue was ordinary operating data; extracting it required 13 months of litigation by a resourced newsroom. This is the strongest practical argument for a mandatory register: it removes the need to sue.
- A single facility reaching 29% and later 40% of a city's total water consumption is invisible in state or national statistics. Basin- and municipal-level reporting is the only scale at which this impact is detectable.
- A local government can end up litigating against its own residents' interest in disclosure, with the affected company funding the city's legal costs. Prohibiting that arrangement is a distinct, narrow policy fix.
- Disclosure practice can improve after a forced release: Google now publishes site-level water data for 36 cities and remains the only major operator doing so, suggesting the change was company-specific rather than sector-wide.
Sources
2Documented Jul 28, 2026