Google is offering more information about its proposed data center near the Duane Arnold nuclear plant. Last week, the tech giant hosted a four-hour community open house in Palo, a small community near Cedar Rapids.
Google will ask Palo to annex a 650-acre site near the Duane Arnold energy center for a data center, plus 100 more acres to connect that site to the rest of city limits. Google already has a power buying agreement with Duane Arnold. NextEra Energy expects the nuclear plant to begin operating in 2029.
Palo’s planning and zoning commission is set to review Google’s annexation request on Nov. 9.
Google said the data center would bring $170 million of tax revenue to Palo, Linn County and the Cedar Rapids School District over 20 years.
Google’s Allyson Eastman is in charge of community development for the project. She’ll help together a local advisory group to recommend ways to guide other benefits Google could offer.
“We do community investments, which definitely means investments in nonprofits, the schools, et cetera,” Eastman said. “But more than that, we look to create long term partnerships. Everything we do in every community is bespoke, so we are really here to learn, to listen and then to create that together.”
She said Google is especially excited to expand student’s exposure to STEM opportunities through school and extracurriculars.
A panel of leaders from Google’s team went through slides of information about construction, site layout, noise levels, energy use and water consumption — all things Palo residents have expressed concern about.
Google’s Kiran Udayakumar said the company analyzed over 100 years of data on the Cedar River and found the river has enough capacity to provide water for all industries up and downstream from the site.
“One of the key things is we will not use groundwater from any bedrock aquifer such as the Silurian or the Jordan for any cooling operation,” Udayakuma said.
Some Palo residents thought Google wanted its project to be annexed into Palo to avoid Linn County’s data center ordinance, which included an expensive water study. But the week after the open house, Linn County supervisors signed a memorandum of understanding that, regardless of annexation, Google will pay close to a quarter of a million dollars for a third-party water balance study for the entire region.
Linn County planning director Charlie Nichols said it will clarify what resources the area has and where it may need to gather more information.
“The study would evaluate interconnected water resources, including the Cedar River, Cedar River alluvial aquifer, Devonian-Silurian aquifer, [and the] Jordan aquifer,” Nichols told supervisors.
Nichols told IPR the study Google presented at the open house was internal research that focused on their own project site. The third party study, led by the county and conducted by consultants Black & Veatch, is for the entire county and all its water users, Nichols said.
Supervisors stressed that Google will have no input or early access to the study.
“Google has nothing to do with the scope of this project,” Supervisor Sami Scheetz said. “They’re not involved in any way in the day-to-day conducting of the study, and they’re not privy to the results until after the study is complete. So just to be frank with the public, there’s no influence of Google in the actual study itself.”
The county expects results of the water study in March 2027. Google hopes its data center campus will begin operating at the end of 2028.
