Contractors at the new Google data center site were busy this afternoon, Nov. 28. The walls for the first of two data centers were erected for the first 288,000-square-foot facility months ago. Google’s contractor Whiting-Turner has now submitted a second request to site and construct the second data center at 290,000 square feet to the City of The Dalles planning department.

However, representatives from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which provides power to the City of Cascade Locks, have now confirmed to Columbia Insight that BPA does plan to charge the city a higher rate for its electricity due in part to the new data center’s power usage. According to a recent City of Cascade Locks memo obtained by Columbia Insight, these new increased rates are expected to cost the city an additional $570,000 a year.

Travis Fox of Springfield, Oregon, is just one of the dozens of workers brought into The Dalles to work indirectly or directly on projects related to Google’s new data center. The site at 3500 River Road is being prepped for construction and City Planning says they are expecting a building permit any day now.

The Dalles Community Development Director Joshua Chandler recently signed the approval of an administrative decision to allow Google to site and construct one single-story data center with a separate office building and associated infrastructure.

Google's first data center in The Dalles went online in 2007 and had been exempt from property taxes in Wasco County for the past 15 years. With the expiration of the enterprise zone abatement, this property is fully taxable and now on the tax roll this year.

It looks fairly unanimous as The Dalles City Council is leaning heavily in favor of a deal to abate taxes for two new Google data centers. They are slated to decide on Monday night. Economist David Swensen differs in opinion when it comes to the overall benefit a data center brings to a community.