Google transfers ownership of new aquifer storage and recovery facility to The Dalles

THE DALLES — As conditioned in a 2021 agreement to build two new data centers, Google has completed $28 million worth of water infrastructure upgrades in The Dalles, including an aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) system intended to offset increasing demand as the corporation’s campus expands.

Google officially transferred ownership of the system, which functions by pumping excess treated water underground for later use, to the City of The Dalles during an Oct. 22 ribbon-cutting ceremony. Along with existing groundwater rights donated by Google, the city will soon have an additional 100 million gallons of water to distribute annually.

“That 100 million gallons annually is above and beyond what will be needed for the new data centers, and we do believe that’s actually a low estimate,” said Anthony Giovannone, who manages utility infrastructure strategy for Google’s data centers. “We are making an enduring and positive contribution to the fundamental infrastructure that secures this community’s future.”

“The City of The Dalles and Wasco County have been dealing with Google for the last 20 years,” Mayor Richard Mays, who helped negotiate the agreement, said during the ceremony. “Google has lived up to every commitment that they have made.” 

Having built its first in 2006, Google now has five operational data centers in The Dalles, with the sixth set to come online next year. Back in 2012, Google accounted for about 10% of the city’s total annual water consumption. By last year, that figure had risen to nearly one-third — or 434 million gallons of water — according to data provided by the city.

Along with the amount paid in property taxes, Google’s use of water to cool servers inside its data centers has long been controversial. During the most recent round of negotiations, a nondisclosure agreement restricted city officials from sharing Google’s internal consumption numbers, data that only became accessible to the public because of a lawsuit, and after both parties had already signed the deal.

“Clean water is a precious resource, and we should treat it as such,” Kelly Campbell, policy director for the nonprofit Columbia Riverkeeper, said over email. “As snowmelts decrease, causing strains on local watersheds, we must be creating systems that protect vital stream habitat.”

How the ASR system operates

The Dalles relies on several water sources to serve residents and businesses. Surface water is diverted from the Dog River watershed into South Fork Mill Creek, all of which then sits in the Crow Creek Reservoir before flowing through the Wicks Water Treatment Plant about eight miles southwest of downtown.

Those streams largely satisfy demand during the winter months, and when snowpack melts, precipitation levels fall and usage rises as seasons change, the city taps a suite of groundwater wells to bolster supply, usually between May and October. With the ASR system, however, the city plans to shift that configuration.

“We’ll be keeping the east side of town on the well all winter long. Normally, we take that out of service,” said Public Works Director Dale McCabe. By keeping the well online while running Wicks at normal capacity, the city can pump excess treated water into The Dalles Pool Aquifer via the injection wells that Google drilled, and bring water back up as needed.

Due to significant drops in the water table, The Dalles has been under a critical groundwater notice since 1959; the ASR system, which Google’s Giovannone referred to as a “water savings account that’s underground,” now provides an opportunity to replenish the aquifer — and accommodate more consumption.

After establishing the aquifer’s baseline level, the city and its consultants from GSI Water Solutions conducted the system’s first full-cycle test this summer, followed by a 160-day test this winter. Apart from aquifer recovery and greater capacity, Jerry Anderson, the city’s water distribution manager, emphasized redundancy as an added benefit.

“If we had one of our wells go down, which we did last summer, then we have this as a backup. That’s huge for us,” he said. With the additional piping that Google installed as part of eight smaller projects required by the agreement, there’s also adequate flow for fire suppression across the entire downtown area.

While still leaning on GSI engineers to help run the system and collect samples, testing the quality both when pumping water in and pulling it out, public works will eventually manage the system independently. Since the Wicks plant can only treat so much water daily, Anderson noted that balancing municipal needs with the ASR system will be key.

“How much they can send and how much we can put in,” Anderson said, “it’s going to be a learning cycle not only for distribution, but Wicks treatment, too. A lot of communication back and forth.”

Environmental concerns

While the ASR system will improve groundwater security for The Dalles, Campbell from Columbia Riverkeeper questioned its impact on surface water and the animals dependent on those ecosystems. She pointed to Prineville, where Meta similarly built an ASR system to satiate its water demands, albeit one that can inject triple the volume.

As part of the project, Prineville developed a mitigation plan to ensure adequate stream flow, particularly for fish like salmon and trout that are reliant on year-round cold water, according to The Bulletin. With direction from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, the city releases water stored in a surface reservoir to replenish the Crooked River when necessary.

“So far, neither Google nor The Dalles has been transparent with the public about any requirements made by state regulators regarding pumping that stored water back into the stream for the benefit of salmon and river restoration during summer months,” Campbell said.

McCabe and Anderson weren’t to comment on a potential metigation plan by press deadline, but the online version of this story may include a response.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation also analyzed both current and future water supply and demand in the Hood River Basin, which feeds the Dog River, under three different climate change scenarios back in 2015. Already, the agency found, the Hood River Basin can’t quench competing demands during the summer months and wrote that the Dog River is “unable to satisfy average historical demands” during future conditions with low water.

“The overbuilding of data centers threatens our ability to meet our clean energy goals and exacerbates climate change,” said Campbell. “It may also thwart efforts to save endangered and threatened salmon by hindering dam removal efforts, lead to reliance on dirty fossil fuel or nuclear plants and burden low-income communities through soaring electricity costs for energy consumers.”

Both McCabe and Anderson stressed, however, that the city’s in no danger of running out of water, especially since it holds additional ground and surface water rights that aren’t currently being utilized. As Mays pointed out, the city also updated its Water System Master Plan last year, which identified strategies to improve resiliency, like renovating the Wicks plant and expanding the Crow Creek Reservoir.

Rather than substantially raising water rates to fund those upgrades, estimated to cost $75 million, the city’s using money paid by Google, he added.

“I don’t think we’re wasting any water. I think it’s being used to supply businesses and the residents of the city in a fair, cost-effective way,” Mays said. “[Google] conserves water as much as they possibly can, because they don’t want to pay for any more than they have to.”

All three city officials said that Google has been a responsive, generous partner. Mays expects their relationship to stretch far into the future, but he pictures one that’s less oriented around expansion.

“I want them to be around. I want them to continue paying what they’ve agreed to pay. I want them to continue to contribute to the city and the community like they have been,” said Mays. “I’m very ambivalent about growth. I don’t really look forward to them building any more data centers here.”