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Google is moving forward with a proposed 545-acre data center campus near Palo, scheduling a public meeting as it prepares to seek annexation into the city. Questions about water use, energy demand and local oversight remain central to the proposal, which still requires regulatory approvals before construction can begin.
The meeting will take place at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, at the Palo Community Center and is open to everyone. Google officials said they will share additional project details, including a proposed construction timeline.
A letter outlining the proposal was expected to reach residents’ mailboxes Friday, Oct. 9.
"We have been exploring the possibility of a data center in Palo, and I wanted to help share more information so the community can hear directly from us about what this project will look like and how it can benefit Palo", Steve Walter, Google’s vice president of global infrastructure and energy, wrote in the letter.
Beyond explaining the project, Google wants residents to help shape its local investments. The meeting is designed to "answer questions at a community level, but also invite feedback from the community on the different types of investments they would like to see us make across sustainability, workforce development (and) education", said Ben Townsend, global head of infrastructure strategy and sustainability at Google.
"Every time we explore a new project like this, it becomes another new home for us, and there’s a lot of different opportunities for us to invest in the long-term success of communities", Mr. Townsend said. "We want to get that feedback from the communities to make sure we’re investing in the right things."
Officials said addressing residents early could create an "open dialog to demystify projects like this."
"There’s a lot of talk, at a community level and at a national level, about data centers", Mr. Townsend said. "There’s some misunderstandings, some misconceptions, and some fears. And one of the ways that you solve that is you get in front of people and answer them honestly when it comes to their questions, help them understand what the project is and what the project isn’t. But I think the other opportunity that we have here is the dialog for co-creation of what our investment strategy looks like. So once we’ve explained what a data center is and what it isn’t, we want to pivot the discussion to a community, and that community is Linn County, the city of Palo and the state of Iowa."
Google initially negotiated with Linn County over locating the campus on unincorporated land near the Duane Arnold Energy Center north of Palo. On Feb. 26, county staff informed the company that the board was willing to formally accept its economic terms.
Google told the county that same day that it would instead pursue voluntary annexation into Palo. The company said it was "focusing on the annexation process with the City of Palo" because that approach "best prioritizes our long-term investment and the region’s economic benefits."
Linn County Supervisor Kirsten Running-Marquardt questioned that explanation, saying she believed Google was seeking to avoid the county’s restrictive data center zoning ordinance, approved in February.
"Google has decided to bypass the protections that we put in place in our ordinance for the residents, for our water, for their protection and noise pollution, light or otherwise, and work with Palo to annex the land and move the data centers forward under Palo’s jurisdiction", Ms. Running-Marquardt said.
Mr. Townsend, who said he was "boots on the ground" for some negotiations, said the decision centered on "working with jurisdictions that have a shared vision and some experience on large industrial-scale projects, and have the planning resources, the personnel in-house that can really come together and start to construct the foundational documents and the vision to get a project going forward."
"Palo simply felt more interested in helping to drive that", Mr. Townsend said.
He disputed the suggestion that Google was trying to evade the county ordinance.
"At the end of the day, both the city of Palo and the county have tools to manage projects like this", he said.
Trent Fellers, public affairs manager for Google’s data centers in Nebraska and Iowa, said the voluntary annexation process has not started. Google officials said an application would be filed with Palo "in the coming weeks."
Mr. Townsend said Linn County would retain some supervisory and regulatory authority regardless of the annexation outcome, "which we welcome."
"We want to empower communities at a city level, at a county level, to make decisions on what their future looks like", he said. "Our success in that location is going to be dependent ultimately on Linn County co-signing a lot of what will need to be agreed upon for the project to come together."
Google has held "further negotiations and conversations" with Palo leaders. The city approved its own data center zoning ordinance in July, incorporating many provisions similar to the county’s rules but leaving water regulation to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources rather than controlling usage locally.
The proposed campus would use evaporative water cooling, a technology that comes amid criticism of data centers’ substantial water consumption for cooling computer servers.
"We take our responsibility to steward local water resources seriously", the letter says. "We evaluate the local water source for each data center to ensure that our water use is responsible and resilient. We also work to improve watershed health and have pledged to replenish 100% of the water we use."
Mr. Townsend said Google conducts "detailed hydrological risk assessments, because we want to ensure that water is sustainable" before acquiring a site like Palo.
"Water can be a very important tool in reducing data center energy consumption, as well as helping to reduce the noise of operations", he said. "Evaporative cooling technology reduces grid congestion, energy consumption, and emissions that come with it. But we know that water is a plentiful resource in some locations and scarce in others."
Mr. Townsend added that Google is "the first major cloud provider to disclose the amount of water we use on every site that we own and operate."
"This is above and beyond what’s typically required by law", he said, "but we think it’s important for both water planners and communities to understand how much water is being used. We report our water use for each site that we have in our portfolio, including in Iowa, and we will do the same in Palo."
Energy demand is another concern raised about data centers. Google’s letter says the company is "committed to investing in new clean energy" for Palo and "committed to paying for 100% of the power our data centers use and all new infrastructure costs driven by our growth."
Those commitments "are baked into our agreement with [Central Iowa Power Cooperative] and Corridor Energy (Cooperative)", the letter says.
Mr. Fellers said the project is directly connected to the 25-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between Google and NextEra Energy. Under that agreement, Google would use most of the output from a restarted Duane Arnold Energy Center. The restart remains in the regulatory approval process.
Google officials declined to disclose the campus’s projected energy consumption or overall capital investment.
Mr. Fellers said the project could employ up to 1,200 construction workers and create "hundreds" of permanent campus jobs, but he did not provide a specific permanent-job count.
"It’s easy to imagine a lot of high-quality jobs materializing in the region across the different projects", Mr. Townsend said.
According to the letter, Google will not seek property tax abatements for the Palo campus, and the city is not offering them. Mr. Townsend noted, however, that Iowa offers qualifying data centers tiered sales and use tax exemptions and partial refunds based on capital investment. Hyperscale facilities can also qualify for property tax exemptions on eligible equipment.
The Palo proposal would add to Google’s existing Iowa footprint. The company operates the Google Southland campus southeast of Council Bluffs, which opened in 2013 and has seven operating data center buildings, and the Council Bluffs Data Center campus, established in 2007. Another campus is under construction in southwest Cedar Rapids.
When the Cedar Rapids project was formally announced in May 2025, Google said it planned to invest $7 billion across Iowa within two years, primarily to expand its Cedar Rapids and Council Bluffs campuses. Google spokesperson Devon Smiley said the proposed Palo campus would be an additional investment beyond that $7 billion. Google says its total Iowa investment since 2007 exceeds $20 billion.
With construction still subject to regulatory hurdles, the Oct. 22 meeting will offer residents an opportunity to question Google directly and hear more about the proposed timeline. Palo city officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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