The Data Center Blacked Out Its Water and Power Numbers. Is It Worth Hiring a Lawyer to Pry Them Loose?

First I checked the obvious thing — does suing actually get the numbers?

Yeah. Over and over. In The Dalles, Oregon, the city itself went to court to keep Google's water use secret, arguing it was a trade secret. That fight dragged on for more than a year before Google gave up and the figures came out. Down in Dorchester County, South Carolina, officials fought a records request over a Google site for about a year, then handed over the water number to settle.

It's not just Google. In Racine, Wisconsin, Microsoft argued its draw from Lake Michigan was business-confidential. That failed too. Judges in Denver and El Paso County, Colorado ordered utilities to cough up data center water records after they claimed the files couldn't be released.

So the "trade secret" wall keeps falling. The tool works. The catch is the one nobody in the comments mentions: time. A records fight that resolves a year later is still a year later.

Then I looked at the timing, and it flipped how I saw it

Here's what I'd been missing. The decision that actually lets a data center get built — the rezoning, the special permit — happens at a public hearing. That's a totally different clock than a lawsuit.

And people win at that microphone. In Pinal County, Arizona, supervisors voted down a data center rezoning 4 to 1 after residents packed the room for hours. Tucson's city council killed a $3.6 billion Amazon project the same way — a room full of people, not a subpoena. Think of it like arguing with the ref during the game versus mailing in a complaint after the final whistle. One can still change the call. The other just goes in a file.

And what's getting decided at that hearing is big. One phase of one of these campuses can pull around 300 megawatts — enough to run roughly 200,000 homes on a hot afternoon. A records lawsuit that resolves next year can't un-pour a foundation that got approved this month.

So when is the lawyer actually the right call?

A few spots where I think it genuinely earns its keep. When the deal is buried under a non-disclosure agreement — some of these NDAs hide the water and power demand, and a handful hide even which company is behind the project. You can't comment intelligently on a thing you're not allowed to see. Prying that open before the hearing is exactly the kind of fight worth paying for.

The other one: the vote already happened and you need the evidence — to hold an official accountable, or to arm the next town facing the same playbook. And here's a piece I didn't know going in. If you win a public-records suit, the agency can be ordered to pay your attorney's fees. So "lawyer up" isn't automatically money straight out of your pocket — if you win.

If you lose or settle, that's a different story, and I couldn't pin down odds that hold everywhere, because every state's records law is its own animal. What I'd stop assuming is that the lawsuit and the hearing are the same fight. One gets you the truth. The other gets you the vote. You might need both, but not in that order.

What I'd actually do first

Before anybody hires anybody, figure out which clock you're on. Is there a hearing or a vote still coming? Then your energy goes to the room — that's where the thing gets stopped or shaped, and it costs you a night, not a retainer. Is the deal already signed and sealed behind redactions? That's when the records fight starts earning its fee, especially with those attorney's-fee rules in play.

We dug into the whole data center power-and-water mess — the gas turbines, the grid strain, who ends up paying for it all — and laid it out in plain language. Watch the full breakdown and subscribe on the Byte Bungalow YouTube channel, so the next time one of these shows up near you, you already know which fight you're in.

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