Project dossier · The Dalles, Oregon

Google The Dalles Under construction

Chip types: TPU v6e,TPU v5p,TPU v7. Epoch AI estimates ~154 MW.

Key facts

Operator
Google
Owner
Google
Size
154 MW
Location
The Dalles, Oregon
Stage today
Under construction

Source
read 2026-08-14

What to do next

Next step: Under construction — pull the approved conditions and permits and hold the builder to them; an expansion or a new building reopens the record.

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What has happened so far (10 events)

  • 2021-09-01filing
    The Oregonian reporter Mike Rogoway submitted a public records request to the City of The Dalles for records of Google's local water usage, which the city denied by claiming the data was a trade secret, triggering the ensuing legal fight (September 2021). · source
  • 2021-11-08vote
    The Dalles city council authorized an infrastructure agreement with Google (via subsidiary Design LLC) worth $28.5 million for water system improvements. · source
  • 2021-11-09incentive
    Google signed a Strategic Investment Program agreement with The Dalles providing property tax breaks in exchange for the company's investment commitments, alongside a $28.5 million infrastructure agreement. · source
  • 2022-12-14lawsuit
    The Dalles settled its lawsuit against The Oregonian, agreeing to release ten years of Google water-usage records to reporter Mike Rogoway and to have Google reimburse the city's $53,173 in legal fees to the newspaper. · source
  • 2024-01-30permit
    The Dalles' community development department gave Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. approval to begin construction on a 290,000-square-foot, roughly $600 million Google data center building for Google subsidiary Design LLC at the former aluminum smelter site. · source
  • 2025-01-01construction
    Google completed construction of a fourth data center building at its The Dalles campus in 2025. · source
  • 2025-12-09vote
    H.R. 655, the Dalles Watershed Development Act sponsored by Rep. Cliff Bentz, which would transfer about 150 acres of Mt. Hood National Forest land to The Dalles to expand its reservoir, passed the U.S. House and moved to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. · source
  • 2026-01-15environmental
    OPB reported that Google's water consumption in The Dalles rose 316% from 2012 to 2024 (from 104 million to 434 million gallons annually) while the city's population grew only 12%, and that a bill (H.R. 655) would transfer Mount Hood National Forest land to the city to expand its reservoir. · source
  • 2026-01-23coverage
    The Dalles Mayor Richard Mays publicly called OPB's reporting on Google's data center water use inaccurate; OPB's follow-up corrected one error, noting projected residential water rate increases by 2036 were 99%, not the 7% initially reported. · source
  • 2026-02-11protest
    A coalition of 13 organizations including WaterWatch of Oregon, Bark, Columbia Riverkeeper, Sierra Club, and Oregon Wild sent a letter pressuring Senator Wyden to oppose H.R. 655, stating Google has received about $260 million in state and local tax breaks at its The Dalles campus. · source

Find the paper trail

Find the paper trail (1 filed · 11 places to look)

Permits already on file (1)

Filings we have a source for — the record, not a place to look for one.

  • 2024-01-30
    The Dalles' community development department gave Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. approval to begin construction on a 290,000-square-foot, roughly $600 million Google data center building for Google subsidiary Design LLC at the former aluminum smelter site. · source

State environmental permits

Backup generators, water withdrawal and stormwater are permitted by the state, usually earlier and in more detail than anything filed locally.

County & town filings

The rezoning application, site plan, traffic and noise studies, staff report and every revision.

  • Search The Dalles 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 The Dalles 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.

  • No organised market covers this statenoteThere is no public queue to read. The record is the utility's integrated resource plan and its filings at the PUC — plus FERC eLibrary for anything federally docketed.
  • Oregon Public Utility 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 45.600, -121.180 — 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

Other tracked projects in Oregon

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Google The Dalles”, aigridwatch.com/projects/google-the-dalles, 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).

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