Seattle Public Utilities
Seattle's municipal water, drainage, and solid-waste utility, required to deliver a data-centre water-usage assessment by 30 October 2026.
Last refreshed: 15 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
What does Seattle Public Utilities have to report before new data centres can proceed?
Timeline for Seattle Public Utilities
Mentioned in: New York freezes new permits by decree
Data Centres: Boom and BacklashRequired to deliver a water-usage assessment by 30 October under the enacted ordinance
Data Centres: Boom and Backlash: Seattle locks in its data-centre freezeWhy is water use part of Seattle's data-centre moratorium?
What does Seattle Public Utilities have to assess about data centres?
Background
Seattle Public Utilities carries one of the two delivery deadlines written into the city's data-centre moratorium: a water-usage assessment due by 30 October 2026, alongside Seattle City Light's parallel rate and capacity proposal due 1 July .
SPU is Seattle's municipal utility for drinking water, drainage and wastewater, and solid waste, run as a City department rather than a private operator. Its inclusion in the moratorium's binding calendar reflects a wider concern in the data-centre siting fight beyond electricity: large-load facilities also draw heavily on municipal water for cooling, a factor the enacted ordinance requires the utility to formally assess before any new load above 20 MVA can proceed.
Seattle's move sits within a national wave; more than 70 US cities and counties now have active data-centre bans or pauses, and other jurisdictions, including New York's July 2026 executive-order moratorium on new hyperscale permits, are weighing similar resource-strain questions .
