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After fighting its disclosure for more than a year, Dorchester County has agreed to publicize the amount of water used at a data center Google is building, reversing its previous stance that the information is a closely guarded trade secret that shouldn't be shared with the public. The decision is part of a settlement with Frank Heindel, who sued the county last year saying the internet giant's service agreement is a public record subject to the S.C Freedom of Information Act .
As part of the agreement, the county will make public Google's daily and monthly water usage at a data center it's building near St. George. The county, which will provide water to the data center, also agreed that Google's usage is not a trade secret as it had previously claimed.
The company had required the county to hide its water usage data as part of its agreement to build the St. George server farm and another at the Pine Hill Business campus west of Summerville. The lawsuit only named the St.
George site because the county entered into a special water services agreement for that location. Dorchester County will also pay $10,000 of Heindel's attorney's fees in a case that stems from the county's September 2023 rejection of his request for the data under the state's open-records law. "This settlement agreement holds significant implications for public transparency and environmental accountability," Heindel, a Mount Pleasant resident, said in a written statement.
"This agreement will, for the first time, allow the public to see the actual daily water usage of a Google data center — information that is vital for informed public discourse and policy making." Heindel added that "a monopolist, like Google, should not control a secret portion of the public’s daily water supply." Dorchester County said in a statement that it "is committed to conducting public business transparently to ensure that citizens are informed about the actions of public officials, the decisions made in public activities, and the development of public policy.
" "In alignment with this commitment, the county provides access to public records in accordance with the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act," spokeswoman Erin Pomrenke said. Google also operates a data center in Berkeley County. Last week, Heindel filed a public records request seeking daily water usage at that site along U.
S. Highway 52 near Moncks Corner. "Accurate and specific data on daily water consumption is more than a mere statistic; it’s a crucial component of informed public discourse on sustainability," Heindel said.
"Understanding how much water companies like Google use daily allows communities to evaluate the sustainability of corporate practices and their alignment with regional conservation goals." Google's agreement with Dorchester County calls for the St. George site to receive first priority for uninterrupted water use, which means rural residents could be restricted during a crisis even as the data center continues operating, Heindel said.
This is the first known instance in which Google's daily water usage will be available to the public. A lawsuit settlement in Oregon called for monthly reporting for one of the company's data centers in that state, and Google only discloses annual water usage in its yearly environmental reports. Google’s Berkeley County facility, for example, withdrew 847 million gallons in 2023 — a 56 percent increase from 2021 — according to its most recent update .
Data centers use huge amounts of water and electricity to cool and operate giant servers that support fast-growing applications such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence. Google's sustainability reports don't disclose electricity usage, and Dominion Energy has redacted the amount that will be needed at the Pine Hill site, calling it a trade secret. Heindel said he believes the water usage data will help the public estimate the corresponding electrical usage because water is integral to cooling systems during high operational loads.
"Understanding these correlations is vital for assessing the full impact of data center operations on public utilities," he said. This is the third S.C.
Freedom of Information Act battle Heindel has waged with public entities in the state. In 2019, the University of South Carolina settled a lawsuit by agreeing to streamline its response to record requests and create a database of such requests. The following year, state health officials agreed to identify nursing homes and long-term care facilities where employees or residents had tested positive for COVID-19, settling a lawsuit Heindel filed in Richland County.
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