Finding — self-funded — Hillsboro, Oregon
Grading a water claim against the city’s own data
A widely circulated claim about data center water use in Hillsboro, Oregon does not describe Hillsboro. The correction is not hidden, contested or hard to find. It is published on the City’s own website, and it has been sitting there unused.
We publish this one first, deliberately, because it corrects the side of the argument most people paying attention already agree with. That is the only demonstration of independence that counts.
The claim
A petition circulated in Washington County, Oregon in spring 2026 stated that large-scale data centers can consume as much as 4.5 million gallons of water per day. The figure was repeated in local reporting and attributed to a regional conservation organization. It appeared alongside claims about electricity rates, substation costs and school funding. Those are graded separately.
The record
The City of Hillsboro publishes its own data center water figures. As of 2025:
| Measure | Reported | Origin |
|---|---|---|
| Total Hillsboro water use, 2025 | ~6.3 billion gal | observed |
| Total industrial process use | ~3.2 billion gal | observed |
| All data center sites (~14), full year | ~111 million gal | observed |
| Share of total city demand | ~1.76% | observed |
| Share of industrial demand | ~3.4% | observed |
| City treatment capacity | 41.7 million gal/day | observed |
| Highest usage day in a year | ~30 million gal | observed |
The arithmetic
111 million gallons across a year is approximately 304,000 gallons per day — for every data center site in the city, combined.
The claim describes a single large facility using 4.5 million gallons per day. That is roughly fifteen times the daily use of the entire Hillsboro fleet.
An Olympic pool holds about 660,000 gallons. All fourteen Hillsboro data centers together use just under half a pool per day. The claimed figure for one facility is about seven pools a day.
The finding
The claim is phrased as a capability — large-scale facilities can consume as much as 4.5 million gallons per day. Read strictly, that is a statement about what some facilities somewhere are capable of, and this analysis does not contradict it. What it does not do is describe Hillsboro, by approximately two orders of magnitude, in a petition directed at Hillsboro and Washington County.
- claim
- 4.5 million gallons per day, single large-scale facility
- authority
- City of Hillsboro, published 2025 water data
- retrieved
- 2026-09-04
- state
- deviation
Reported daily consumption of 4.5 million gallons for a single large-scale facility does not reconcile against the City of Hillsboro’s reported 2025 water data for all data center sites in the city, as of 2026-09-04.
Note also that the same conservation organization’s own published material states that smaller data centers consume 300,000 to 500,000 gallons per day. That range brackets the entire measured Hillsboro fleet.
What the city’s own comparison shows
Hillsboro offers a comparator we would not have thought to construct. The City reports that the combined 2025 water use of all its data center sites does not exceed the water used by a solar panel manufacturer that operated in Hillsboro during the 2000s and 2010s and has since gone out of business. That single industrial site is reported at approximately 150 million gallons per year, against 111 million for all fourteen data centers.
One manufacturer that closed used more water than everything built on that industrial land since.
We note this without drawing a policy conclusion from it. It is a reported comparison from the jurisdiction’s own record and it bears directly on the question the petition raises.
Water rates run the other way
The same petition argues that data centers pay materially less than households per unit of electricity. On water, the City’s published rates run in the opposite direction.
| Customer | Fixed monthly | Volumetric |
|---|---|---|
| Residential, 5/8″ meter | $21.94 | $3.99 / ccf, first tier |
| Industrial, 2″ meter | $512.16 | $5.17 / ccf |
Per unit delivered, industrial users including data centers pay more for water than residential customers do.
What this does not establish
- It does not address electricity rates, cost allocation, tax abatement, land use, noise or employment. Those are separate questions with separate records, and some of them grade differently.
- It does not establish that data center water use is unimportant, or that it will stay at present levels. Cooling design varies enormously; evaporative systems consume far more than closed-loop or air-cooled designs, and one new facility can change a jurisdiction’s profile.
- It does not address upstream water use. Facilities that cut on-site consumption generally do so by using more electricity for mechanical cooling, and thermal generation consumes water elsewhere. That displacement is real and is not measured here.
- The City’s figures are self-reported by a party with an interest in the answer. They have not been independently verified against utility billing records. They are treated as observed as to content, not as to custody.
Why we published this one
The correction was available to anyone. It sits on a public government website, in plain language, findable in a single search.
It went unused because using it means correcting the side you agree with, and nearly everyone in the argument had already chosen one. The petitioners would not cite it. The City published it once in a defensive posture and moved on. Nobody’s job was to check.
That is the vacancy this firm exists to occupy. Not access to anything secret. Willingness to say the thing that helps the other party.
Funding. Self-funded. No client, no engagement, no party to this matter. Published under the disclosure policy. If you believe this finding is wrong, write to corrections@calyxos.ai.
No individual is named. No claim is characterized as false or misleading. No person’s motive or state of mind is characterized. Figures attributed to the City of Hillsboro are as published by that jurisdiction.