Evaporative cooling towers on municipal and well water
Basis
Fitted to a published figure of 1,000 million gallons a year
Air — what the stacks emit
Nitrogen oxides690t/yr
Sulphur dioxide1,380t/yr
Fine particulates126t PM2.5
Health damages$131M/yr
Where it burns
MISO West — Iowa / Nebraska
Generation mix
Wind 52 · Coal 22 · Gas 14 · Nuclear 8
CO₂e
1,169 kt/yr — climate, not air quality
Who wanted it
Who asked for it
Google — self-build, plus Google Cloud customers and Gemini training
Who approved it
Pottawattamie County + City of Council Bluffs abatements; MidAmerican Energy supply backed by its Iowa wind fleet
What it serves
Google Cloud us-central1, Search, YouTube, and TPU training pods
IT capacity
500 MW running of 700 MW announced
One of Google's largest and thirstiest sites — about a billion gallons a year — but sitting on a wind-heavy MidAmerican grid, so its carbon per unit of compute is among the lowest in the US fleet. The tradeoff between water and carbon is unusually visible here.
Water and air figures are modelled from disclosed capacity, not measured — site-level
error is roughly ±40%. Diesel backup generators are not counted, so on-site figures are floors.
Full method.