The first data centers in Hermiston are still under construction, but the city government is already paving the way for more in the future.

The Hermiston City Council voted Monday to annex 800 acres of land for the purpose of attracting more data centers. The city is looking to turn itself into a hub for cloud computing, with just one city councilor voting against the annexation.

Attracted by cheap power, plentiful land and proximity to the Columbia River’s water supply, Amazon Web Services has built dozens of data centers across Umatilla and Morrow counties, with Hermiston becoming the latest community they’ve expanded into. The company is already in the middle of building two centers in the city.

Although no company is currently attached to the land councilors voted to annex, the city gave it a “hyperscale data center” designation, which is meant to attract a major force in the industry, like Amazon.

“Moving our urban growth boundary is a big step for a city. It opens our area up to more growth, and it is important that we make the accommodations to create jobs,” City Councilor Roy Barrón said before voting to bring the land into the city.

Before data centers, Hermiston’s economy mainly revolved around the agriculture industry and distribution. Assistant City Manager Mark Morgan said Hermiston isn’t pivoting away from its roots, but instead trying to fulfill a decades-long goal of diversifying its economy.

Morgan said the city has fielded interest from tech companies for years and is planning accordingly. A 2024 economic analysis commissioned by the city projected that the tech industry would create more than 1,500 data center jobs over the next 20 years.

No one spoke against the land annexation during the public hearing. Councilor Jackie Linton was the sole vote against it. She brought up a number of concerns about the potential for new data centers, including how they might affect the local water supply.

Many data centers require massive amounts of water to keep their servers cool. One federally funded study found that data centers consumed 17 billion gallons of water in 2023, a figure that is expected to grow tremendously as tech companies look to power generative artificial intelligence.

Morgan said any data center placed on the annexed land would have water piped in from the Columbia River. Some of the land has been used for farming in the past, irrigated with groundwater from wells. Morgan argued that a data center could potentially use less water than agriculture.

He said that there was little to be lost economically by building over the farmland.

“The rest of it has been completely vacant and is essentially native steppe habitat and has had zero jobs over the last 100 years,” he said.

Besides water, data centers need lots of electricity. The federal government expects data centers to push power consumption to record highs over the next two years. Some experts believe that the increased demand for power could drive up electricity costs for consumers.

Hermiston runs its own electricity utility, Hermiston Energy Services, which recently hiked its rates by 20% over the next three years. But Morgan said any increased power costs from data centers would be spread out across a region, rather than just born in Hermiston. That’s because Hermiston Energy Services gets its power through a much larger supplier, the Bonneville Power Administration.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/09/10/hermiston-oregon-data-center-amazon-eastern-ai-technology-power/