Project dossier · West Memphis, Arkansas

Google West Memphis In review

$4B, 1,178-acre campus with 5 buildings in West Memphis, Arkansas. Under construction.

Key facts

Operator: Google
Owner: Google
Size: 1,178 ac
Location: West Memphis, Arkansas
Stage today: In review

What to do next

Next step: An application is in the record. Ask the planning office for the next hearing date and request formal notice.

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What has happened so far (14 events)

2024-11-01filing
Groot LLC, a Google-linked entity, paid $16.5 million to buy roughly 1,117 acres of agricultural land on Bollinger Road in West Memphis, Crittenden County. · source
2025-05-15vote
West Memphis City Council unanimously approved a MOU, development agreement, and PILOT incentive package with Groot LLC for a project valued at up to $10 billion, with potential for up to $50 billion in personal-property tax abatements over 30 years. · source
2025-09-01filing
Entergy Arkansas and Google jointly sought Arkansas Public Service Commission approval of a special electricity rate contract to power the West Memphis data center. · source
2025-09-05coverage
Reporting confirmed Google (via Groot LLC) as the company behind the planned $10 billion, five-building data center campus on 1,178 acres south of Bollinger Road, dubbed Project Pyramid. · source
2025-10-02announcement
Google, Governor Sarah Sanders, and state/local officials formally announced a $4 billion AI/cloud data center project in West Memphis — Google first data center in Arkansas — with a $25 million Energy Impact Fund for low-income households in Crittenden County. · source
2025-10-02utility
Entergy Arkansas announced it would power the Google project with a 600 MW Cypress Solar project and 350 MW of battery storage, with Google saying the deal would deliver over $1.1 billion in net benefits to Entergy customers. · source
2025-11-17hearing
Arkansas PSC held a hearing on the special rate contract between Entergy and Google; the public was asked to leave during portions covering confidential contract details, drawing transparency criticism. · source
2025-12-05ruling
Arkansas PSC approved Entergy special rate contract with Google but denied the utility requested ratemaking treatment and deferred a decision on investment tax credit treatment for the Cypress Solar facility. · source
2025-12-12coverage
Arkansas Advocate reported state officials were largely declining to scrutinize fiscal and environmental tradeoffs of the data center boom out of fear of losing investment to other states. · source
2026-01-01ruling
Arkansas PSC issued a follow-up order reversing itself to allow investment tax credits from the Cypress Solar facility to be used in pricing under the Google contract. · source
2026-02-26coverage
Google began actively hiring for electrical engineer and facilities technician roles at the West Memphis data center, which remained under construction with an expected 18-24 month build timeline. · source
2026-05-03coverage
Reporting revealed Google and Entergy were keeping the full terms of their energy rate contract sealed/confidential, raising transparency concerns among ratepayer advocates. · source
2026-06-04financing
Reporting detailed that bond issuances tied to the West Memphis Google data center PILOT financing could total as much as $60 billion in permanent financing authority over the deal 30-year term. · source
2026-07-29public-comment
At an Arkansas PSC hearing on Entergy proposed residential rate increase, speakers including the Little Rock NAACP chapter head cited the sealed Google contract as evidence of a lack of transparency. · 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.

Arkansas DEQ — Office of Air QualityThe program page: which permits this state requires, and the office that issues them.
ADEQ Permit Data SystemSearchable 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 West Memphis 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 West Memphis 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.
Arkansas Public Service 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.
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

Arkansas briefing — rates, grid carbon, PUC contacts.

Cite this page: GridWatch AI, “Google West Memphis”, aigridwatch.com/projects/google-west-memphis-ar, 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).