Google will spend another $1B on Council Bluffs data center, $1.3M for river restoration

Google will invest another $1 billion in a Council Bluffs data center and $1.3 million on water quality projects in the Missouri River Basin in southwest Iowa.

The new spending, announced Tuesday, is on top of $5.5 billion the tech company has spent since 2007 on the complex in Council Bluffs.

“As we continue to develop and deploy AI solutions across our products, particularly within Google Cloud, our infrastructure is what brings these innovations to people locally and globally,” Joe Kava, vice president of Global Data Centers at Google, said in a prepared statement.

Google is considering whether to build a $576 million data center north of The Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids. The development firm behind the deal closed May 22 on 414 acres of land at 6550 Edgewood Rd. SW, where grading is underway. But Google still hasn’t announced its decision.

“Projects of this scale and complexity include predevelopment and evaluation activities,” Google said in an email last week.

Data centers are fortified warehouses where tech firms house linked computer servers and other hardware that support the applications customers use and data stored online.

Iowa has at least 26 data centers, but only a few are as large as what Google is proposing in Cedar Rapids.

Besides Google’s site in Council Bluffs, Meta has a complex in Altoona, Apple is building in Waukee and Microsoft has six buildings in West Des Moines. Meta is considering another data center in Davenport.

“The Iowa cloud region is part of Google Cloud's global network of 40 regions that delivers high-performance and low-latency services to large enterprises, startups, and public sector organizations, including Hy-Vee Inc., Casey’s and Corteva,” Google said in the prepared statement.

When a data center comes to town, it becomes one of the largest users of electricity and water. Those resources primarily are used to cool the large number of computer servers.

Google says it plans to run its business on carbon-free energy, 24/7, by 2030. But a report released earlier this week shows the company has a long way to go, with greenhouse gas emissions up 13 percent in 2023 from the previous year, the Associated Press reported.

Another Google goal is improving local watershed health where its offices and data centers are located, the company announced earlier this week.

Google will give a $1.3 million grant to the Great Outdoors Foundation to help pay for Missouri River Basin grade stabilization projects in 47 locations. The project is in collaboration with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, various Soil and Water Conservation districts and Drake University.

“This project will reduce surface runoff and erosion and improve flood protection, surface and groundwater quality, and the overall aquatic habitat,” Google said.

Google said it wants to “replenish 120 percent of the water it consumes, on average.” It was unclear whether this means Google plans to recycle water used at its data centers or something else.

Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com

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