Watchdog secures settlement with Pine Island over Google data center concerns

As data centers continue stirring controversy across the United States, a nonprofit has secured a settlement around a nearly 500-acre project in the small southeastern Minnesota town of Pine Island.

Project Skyway is the proposed three-story Google data center in the Goodhue County town, located about 20 miles northwest of Rochester. 

The nonprofit Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which filed the lawsuit, says the Pine Island City Council's approval of a settlement Wednesday night will make this project the first in the state to be reviewed by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

The center's lawsuit alleges the company didn't disclose info about its scale, and the water and energy it plans to use. Kathryn Hoffman, the center's CEO, told WCCO in an interview Thursday they're looking for simple transparency at this rate, and are happy about the oversight the state will now have.  

"We're not even at the point where we can say how much water you're going to use and what that means," Hoffman said.

Earlier this month, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison expressed his concerns that Project Skyway could end up costing Minnesota Xcel Energy customers billions of dollars.

Ellison also claimed Echo Zone, LLC, the Google subsidiary behind the project, and Xcel "redacted almost all of the dollar amounts of these potential impacts" and the two haven't "provided specific explanations for some of its redactions."

In a statement to WCCO, an Xcel spokesperson called Ellison's comments "inconsistent with the facts in the docket," and said Google will "pay their own way."

WCCO's Frankie McLister will sift through the settlement and share the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's response Thursday on WCCO 4 News at 5.