Water usage projections for the proposed data center at Mill Creek Corporate Center showed the data center could use up to 3 million gallons per day and a projected annual total of 39 million gallons.
Company officials said the data center would only use water for cooling on the hottest days of the year.
Currently, the entire city of Salem uses about 25 million gallons of water per day.
The projections were shared with city officials on Monday, June, 29, and released to Salem Reporter in response to a public records request.
READ IT: Verrus data center water projections
Verrus, the Google-funded company proposing the data center, told Salem Reporter the figures represent a “reference point for expected water consumption” of the entire data center campus “and represent what the maximum water consumption might be on the hottest day in recorded history … and the hottest year in recorded history.”
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Verrus spokesperson JP Newmann said the company is calculating a historically average year using a 50-year metric, and said “average water consumption over three buildings is expected to be in the range of 15M-20M gal per year (million gallons per year), or about a 0.2% increase in overall system demand for the Salem municipal water system.”
But in recent years, Oregon has been heating up.
Its third-hottest year on record was 2025, and its sixth-hottest year was 2024, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that stretches back to 1895, the Statesman Journal reported.
Salem hit 117 degrees, its highest temperature ever recorded, in 2021.
According to Noah Alviz, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland, Salem has already had 10 days this year that hit 90 degrees or higher.
The 30-year average for 90-degree days or higher in Salem is 18 days per year, Alviz said.
Newmann said the data center is designed to use hardly any water for cooling for the majority of the year and said water is only consumed during the hottest 20 to 25 days.
The city is already in a state of emergency over water
About a year ago, the city of Salem declared a state of emergency to fast track a number of water infrastructure projects to safeguard the city’s drinking water supply in preparation for a deep drawdown of the Detroit Reservoir.
Early last month, the city sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the planned drawdown because lowering the reservoir’s water level would likely overwhelm the city’s water filtration system with sediment. If that happens, the city would have to dip into water reserves to meet the city’s growing water demands.
The maximum amount of water the city could pull from its backup sources if the occasion called for it would be 21 million to 23 million gallons per day, Allen Dennen, a city engineer, told councilors. That’s short of the 25 million gallons per day Salem residents use on average during the highest demand in the wintertime, Dennen said.
“Because a more comprehensive site design has not been finalized, there is some uncertainty in expected usage,” Newmann said of the data center project. “These numbers represent extreme scenarios and can be modified based on our collaboration with the city’s water department to identify and accommodate system constraints.”
The city of Salem was unable to answer questions by Wednesday afternoon about whether the city’s water system could sustain the level of usage projected for the data center.
The projections also showed the data center could discharge as much as 20,000 gallons of water per day, and a projected annual total of 3 million gallons per year.
Verrus said the projections are for a 132-acre data center site with three buildings.
Prior specifications on the data center shared with the public by the company indicated a 75-acre site.
Verrus’ Michigan data center uses less water
The water use projections for the Salem campus are significantly more than projections for a similar Verrus data center project in Michigan. That data center, which is about double the size of the Salem data center, is expected to use less than 9 million gallons annually, according to records from Lyon Township, Michigan.
Newmann said the Michigan data center is actually expected to use 12 million gallons of water annually for cooling, landscaping, and sanitation water.
“Water consumption of data center facilities is highly dependent upon regional weather patterns and Michigan’s climate is significantly different than Oregon’s,” Newmann said. “Although it may seem that the Verrus project in Michigan is double the size of Salem (i.e.; there are twice as many buildings), each building at Oakline (Salem data center) has been consolidated to hold twice as much IT equipment, and thus correspondingly requires twice as much cooling overhead.”
According to Salem city documents, the completed multi-phase Verrus project in Mill Creek isn’t expected to operate until 2031.
The company said its data center would use what is called a closed-loop cooling system that continuously recirculates water instead of evaporating it, resulting in significantly lower water usage than other data centers.
The company told Salem Reporter in July that it could not share figures on water usage because its plans were still being engineered.
Salem moves forward with moratorium
The water usage projections are based on the company’s plans prior to submitting its application for the first phase of the project to the city of Salem on Friday, July 31.
The first phase, according to the company’s application, is for two buildings with about 600,000 square feet on about 100 acres of land in southeast Salem.
The project, valued at $394 million for the first phase, would be in the Mill Creek Corporate Center and adjacent to Corban University.
The California company submitted its application for the first phase just a day after Gov. Tina Kotek appeared to put a significant kink in its plans. She pulled back 32 acres of state land slated to be sold to Verrus as part of its Salem campus.
Then, on Monday, Aug. 3, the Salem City Council voted unanimously to start the process for a moratorium on data centers and for initiating changes to city zoning rules to address data centers.
It was unclear whether a moratorium would affect the Verrus project given the company has submitted its application for the project’s first phase.
Newmann told Salem Reporter in an email on Tuesday, Aug. 4, that its submission ahead of the council vote on a moratorium “reflects Verrus’ commitment to continue the open public process, answer questions with facts and demonstrate what Oakline (the data center) can deliver.”
“This submission now enables both the land use experts at the city of Salem and community members at large to apply local scrutiny to Verrus’ innovative site design, infrastructure approach and environmental considerations for the first phase of a proposed multi-phased project,” Newman said. “By submitting this detailed plan we are demonstrating we remain open to continue improving our approach in collaboration with the Salem community.”
“That by publicly announcing the proposal two weeks ago and before requesting site plan review by the city reinforces Verrus’ commitment to transparency and desire for the Salem community to provide input as the City’s public and quite detailed impact assessment process moves forward,” Newmann added.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
Verrus surprised, disappointed by Kotek’s move to block sale of 32-acres of land at Mill Creek Corporate Center
Planning commission recommends council change code to make data centers conditional
City manager calls special council meeting Monday to consider moratorium on data centers
Proposed data center draws tremendous blowback at Monday night’s council meeting
UPDATE AT 12:33 a.m.: Salem council votes to explore banning NDAs with data center companies
Salem councilor pitches ban on NDAs, new task force around data center developments
Reilly Norgren contributed reporting.
Contact reporter Joe Siess: joe@salemreporter.com.
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