What is a data center?
A data center is a facility that houses computer systems and servers. These systems store, process, and deliver digital services such as cloud-based software like shopping and social media apps, music and video streaming, medical imaging and healthcare records, online banking, artificial intelligence, and support for advanced manufacturing.
Does Clean Water Services make decisions about whether or not land can be used for a data center?
Development of a data center is typically a land use decision generally done by a city or county. Clean Water Services does not make decisions about land use. Once a data center or other industrial facility has been approved, constructed, or is in operation, Clean Water Services is responsible for working with the industrial customer to protect our region’s water quality.
What are the limits of Clean Water Services’ authority in relation to data centers?
Clean Water Services is a public utility that provides wastewater and stormwater services to over 600,000 residential and industrial customers in urban Washington County and parts of Multnomah and Clackamas counties. We operate under some of the strictest water quality limits in the nation to protect public health and the Tualatin River. Those limits are set in a watershed-based National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit administered by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The watershed-based permit — which combines the permits for Washington County’s four wastewater treatment facilities and the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System — allows us to coordinate efforts across our facilities and collaborate with Washington County and our 12 partner cities to consider the watershed as a whole.
Clean Water Services’ watershed-based permit includes requirements that industrial facilities — including data centers — have systems in place that control pollutants onsite if the volume or quality of the discharge could cause disruption of the treatment process at CWS facilities, or if federal requirements apply. Developments must operate in a way that ensures stormwater quality is suitable to return to the Tualatin River.
How does Clean Water Services ensure that data centers do not negatively impact our water quality of the Tualatin River and its tributaries?
Industrial facilities have the potential to be a source of pollutants, either in start-up construction phases or during routine operations. Clean Water Services has the authority to evaluate, inspect, permit, and require pollution control measures in relation to site development, wastewater discharge, and stormwater management. Learn more from our Data Center and Water Quality fact sheet.
The EPA mandates industrial pretreatment to help prevent pollutants and substances from disrupting wastewater treatment processes. Pretreatment involves removing, reducing, or treating harmful pollutants in industrial wastewater before it goes to a treatment facility. Clean Water Services is responsible to Oregon DEQ and EPA for regulating and enforcing pretreatment requirements within our jurisdiction.
Not all data centers are the same, and they employ various cooling techniques. Data centers currently within Clean Water Services’ jurisdiction have so far reported using closed-loop systems that do not discharge wastewater into the public sanitary sewer system.
CWS relies on notification from cities, self-reporting by industrial users, or routine survey efforts to identify industrial users proposing to discharge to the public sanitary sewer system.
In March 2026, CWS began a coordinated survey effort using business license lists from cities and online data center locator services to identify data centers that had not self-reported. CWS continually evaluates ongoing facility operations to determine the nature and extent of regulatory requirements.
Is Clean Water Services providing recycled water to data centers?
Some data centers use recycled water to cool their facilities. Clean Water Services is exploring opportunities to partner with industries, including data centers, to increase use of recycled water in our service area.
Clean Water Services cleans about 68 million gallons of wastewater every day to some of the highest standards in the nation, and we constantly strive to ensure water is put to its best use to meet and balance our region’s long-term needs. Cleaned to near drinking water standards, much of the water is returned to the Tualatin River, but we reuse some of it for irrigation of golf courses, parks, and schools, and for wetland plants and ecological restoration.
Are you raising rates because of data centers?
No. Clean Water Services only handles the wastewater from homes, businesses, and industries, and we manage stormwater. If data centers discharge wastewater into the public sanitary system, they would be required to pay like any other industrial customer. Data centers do not receive subsidies or special rates from Clean Water Services. The fees and charges paid by the company that owns a data center, or the developer constructing it, may include:
- System Development Charges (including an industrial connection fee) paid by developers to cover the cost of capital infrastructure improvements necessary to provide capacity for new development
- If they discharge wastewater into the public sanitary sewer system, an industrial discharge permit fee and a monthly sewer usage fee based on the actual volume and characteristics of industrial wastewater discharges to contribute to the costs of operating the sanitary sewer system
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Business & Industry
Learn more about how we work with business and industrial partners to help protect public health and our environment.