Google Council Bluffs (East)
Chip types: TPU v5e,TPU v6e,TPU v5p,TPU v7. Epoch AI estimates ~237 MW.
Key facts
- Operator
- Owner
- Tenant
- Google DeepMind
- Size
- 237 MW
- Location
- Council Bluffs, Iowa
- Stage today
Source
read 2026-08-14
What to do next
Next step: Already operating — the leverage now is enforcement: noise and water conditions, tax revenue tracking, and any expansion filing, which reopens the record.
What has happened so far (11 events)
- 2007-06-01announcement
In June 2007, Google announced a $600 million investment to build a data center at a former drive-in theater site on Veterans Memorial Highway in Council Bluffs, with the first phase targeted for completion in 2009. · source - 2013-10-03operational
Google held a grand opening for its second Council Bluffs campus on Bunge Avenue, starting with 50 employees focused on installing, upgrading, and maintaining servers. · source - 2014-03-28announcement
Google announced a third expansion phase (Southlands) in Council Bluffs, creating 35 additional positions and bringing total investment to $1.5 billion, the largest private investment in Iowa history at that time; the state increased Google's sales and use tax abatement from $9.6 million to $16.8 million. · source - 2023-08-08announcement
Google announced a $350 million expansion of its Council Bluffs data center, the third expansion since 2007, along with a $250,000 grant to Advance Southwest Iowa; the campus then spanned over 2.5 million square feet east of Interstate 29 on Bunge Avenue. · source - 2024-07-02announcement
Google announced an additional $1 billion investment in its Council Bluffs data center plus $1.3 million for water preservation in the Missouri River Valley Basin, bringing the campus to approximately 3 million square feet and total investment to over $6 billion. · source - 2025-05-30announcement
Google announced a $7 billion investment in Iowa over the next two years for a new data center in Cedar Rapids and expansion of its existing Council Bluffs facility, plus a partnership with the Electrical Training Alliance to increase Iowa's electrical workforce pipeline by 95 percent. · source - 2025-10-27utility
Google and NextEra Energy announced a collaboration to restart the 615 MW Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa under a 25-year power purchase agreement, with operations expected by Q1 2029, to support Google's expanding Iowa data center operations. · source - 2026-06-03environmental
Google gave $3 million to Omaha's Metropolitan Utilities District to install acoustic leak detection sensors across 500 miles of high-priority water lines, part of a $17 million water stewardship initiative across seven states including Iowa where Google operates data centers. · source - 2026-06-18vote
The Council Bluffs City Council rejected Mayor Jill Shudak's proposed 12-month moratorium on new data center construction; Public Works Director Matt Cox noted data centers request one to two million gallons of water per day and individual projects could max out sewer capacity. · source - 2026-07-08report
Flatwater Free Press reported that Google self-reported its Council Bluffs facility consumed 1.3 billion gallons of water in 2025, more than any of its other data center locations worldwide that year. · source - 2026-08-04construction
A construction apprentice was trapped under an elevator at Google Southlands in Council Bluffs and airlifted to a hospital after the Council Bluffs Fire Department extracted him; the incident occurred at approximately 5 p.m. during ongoing construction work. · source
Find the paper trail
Find the paper trail (0 filed · 12 places to look)
State environmental permits
Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.
- Iowa DNR — Air Quality BureauThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
- Iowa DNR document searchSearchable public filings — search the operator, the shell LLC on the deed, and the address.
County & town filings
The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.
- Search Council Bluffs planning filingssearchPlanning departments post application files under many different names. Find the department, then ask the clerk for the application number — that number unlocks everything else.
- Search Council Bluffs property records / GISsearchThe parcel record names the buying LLC and the sale date, which is what ties an anonymous filing to an operator.
Utility & grid records
The electricity request is filed with the grid operator and the utility long before the town hears about it — and states the real load.
- MISO (Midwest & Gulf) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Southwest Power Pool (Plains) — interconnection queueRequested megawatts, queue position and target in-service date. The MW here is the real number; the one at the town meeting is often phase one.
- Iowa Utilities Commission — docket searchSpecial contracts, large-load tariffs and rate cases are docketed here. Testimony and exhibits are public, and are usually more candid than the press release.
- FERC eLibraryFederal filings: transmission agreements, interconnection service agreements, and co-location disputes.
- Search the serving utility for a will-serve lettersearchThe will-serve or load-service letter is the utility's own written commitment. Ask the utility and the PUC for it by name — it is frequently the first document to exist.
Federal databases
Works anywhere, and covers the operator's record at its other sites.
- EPA ECHO facility searchEvery federally-reported air, water and waste permit at a facility, plus its inspection and violation history. Search by address or draw a radius around the site. This project's locality centres on 41.220, -95.860 — search that point with a 5-mile radius.
- EPA EnvirofactsThe same underlying records, queryable by county — useful for 'what else is permitted near this site' rather than one facility.
- EPA Facility Registry ServiceResolves the shell LLC on a permit to the facility it belongs to. Worth a look when the filing name means nothing locally.
These are places to look, not evidence that anything has been filed. Links were checked on 2026-08-21; search links are queries, not records. What to ask for.
Around here
- Iowa briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.
Other tracked projects in Iowa
- Microsoft Project Osmium — West Des Moines, 109 mi Under construction
- Google Cedar Rapids — Cedar Rapids, 221 mi In review
- QTS Cedar Rapids Data Center Campus — Cedar Rapids (Linn County), 223 mi Approved
Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Google Council Bluffs (East)”, aigridwatch.com/projects/google-council-bluffs-east, retrieved 2026-10-11.
As of August 2026 (2m ago) · changes weekly — re-check before citing
A working set of identified proposals a community can track, not a census — most of the country's activity is not in here yet. Pennsylvania is the exception: its rows are synced from PA DEP's own data-center permit tracker, so the state's coverage is close to complete and carries the permit trail with it. **Each row carries its own provenance.** Rows showing a verification date link to reporting or the governing body's own record and were read on that date; rows marked *unverified* have no source on record — a lead to check, not a fact to cite. **Stage is derived, not asserted.** *Hearing scheduled*, *Awaiting decision*, *Approved* and *Withdrawn* are computed from each row's milestone dates on every rebuild, so a hearing date that has passed stops reading 'scheduled'. Hearings get moved and projects re-file under new names — treat a scheduled date as the earliest to act by, and confirm with the clerk before relying on it. Leads are mined into data/project_candidates.json and promoted here only after a human reads a primary source.
Part of the data center project tracker — open data, CC BY 4.0 (JSON · CSV).