Example: Google’s water disclosure battle

For a year during 2022-2023, the US city of the Dalles, OR, fought “The Oregonian” newspaper in court trying to keep secret the public records of how much water it supplied to Google’s data centers located there. Google had paid for the city’s legal expenses incurred suing “The Oregonian” and Google also paid for the settlement, which made public that Google was consuming 29% of the city’s water. That amount of water could cover the city to a depth of 2 inches/5 cm, according to “The Oregonian”‘s coverage.

Around that time Google disclosed in its corporate environmental reports some data about its water usage, which all the Big 3 had previously refused to disclose.