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Data Centres: Boom and Backlash
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Microsoft Mount Pleasant: 8M gallons via lawsuit

3 min read
10:53UTC

Microsoft's Mount Pleasant phase 1 draws 8 million gallons of water a year, a figure released only after Milwaukee Riverkeeper sued the city of Racine to break a non-disclosure clause in the development agreement.

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Key takeaway

Microsoft signed a basin-level water pledge and a Racine NDA in the same year; only litigation reconciled them.

Microsoft announced a basin-level water disclosure framework in January 2026, committing to replenish more water than it withdraws in the same catchments. 1 The same company's development agreement with the city of Racine, Wisconsin included a non-disclosure clause covering community-impact data for its Mount Pleasant campus, an arrangement only broken when Milwaukee Riverkeeper sued for the records. The released figure was 8 million gallons per year for phase 1 of a $3.3 billion site. Amazon still publishes no electricity figures at all.

Milwaukee Riverkeeper is a non-profit water-quality organisation founded in 1995 to monitor and litigate on the Milwaukee River basin, working under the federal Clean Water Act and Wisconsin's open-records law. Its Racine lawsuit invoked the Wisconsin Public Records Law, which generally requires municipal contracts to be disclosed unless a specific statutory exemption applies. The court found the NDA could not override the statutory disclosure obligation. The Mount Pleasant site is the Wisconsin campus on which Microsoft is investing $3.3 billion across multiple build phases, sited in part because the area was previously zoned for the Foxconn project that collapsed in 2018.

The 8 million gallons per year figure is for phase 1 only and excludes evaporative cooling losses, which water disclosure frameworks typically itemise separately. Phase 1 is roughly a quarter of the planned campus by floor area; the full build's annual draw will likely be four to six times the disclosed phase 1 number, depending on cooling architecture. WRI Aqueduct, the World Resources Institute's water-stress mapping tool, classifies the relevant catchment as low-stress, which is part of why the project cleared its environmental review without significant friction.

Microsoft's basin-level framework was designed to be cited in ESG filings; the Racine NDA was designed to keep specific community-impact data out of public hearings. Both can be true simultaneously. Amazon's silence on electricity figures sits at the cleaner end of the same problem. Without site-level disclosure mandated by law (rather than by litigation), corporate sustainability reports remain selective by construction. Whether Microsoft amends its development-agreement template after the Racine ruling is the next test of whether the January pledge is operative or rhetorical.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Data centres use large amounts of water, mainly for cooling. A server room generates enormous heat; water is used to absorb that heat and release it into the atmosphere through cooling towers. Microsoft announced in January 2026 that it would publicly report its water use at the level of river basins, and commit to putting back more water than it takes out. This sounds reassuring, but separately, its agreement with Racine, a city in Wisconsin, included a clause preventing the city from sharing data about the environmental impact of the Mount Pleasant campus. Milwaukee Riverkeeper, an environmental group, sued under Wisconsin's public records law to force the city to release that data. The court agreed, and the released figure was 8 million gallons of water per year for just the first phase of a $3.3 billion site. Amazon, by comparison, publishes no electricity usage figures at all, a reminder that voluntary disclosure is the exception, not the norm.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Cities negotiating development agreements with hyperscalers routinely accept NDA clauses borrowed from private sector contracting, under pressure to secure large investments. Those clauses rarely survive public records challenge, but public records challenges are rarely filed.

Milwaukee Riverkeeper's lawsuit against Racine is unusual in that an environmental group had both standing and resources to pursue the action against a city backed by Microsoft's legal team.

What could happen next?
  • Precedent

    Milwaukee Riverkeeper's successful public records action against Racine provides a legal template for challenging municipal NDAs in development agreements across all US states with strong open-records statutes.

  • Meaning

    The 8 million gallons-per-year figure for phase one of Mount Pleasant, once public, becomes the baseline reference point for water-use assessments of future Microsoft campus phases and competitor facilities of comparable scale.

Sources:Tom's Hardware / Wisconsin Examiner·Tom's Hardware / Wisconsin Examiner
Mentions:Microsoft →Amazon →WRI Aqueduct →Milwaukee Riverkeeper →Mount Pleasant Wisconsin →Racine →AWS →
First Reported In

Update #1 · Boom hits wall: grid says no, states freeze

Tom's Hardware / Wisconsin Examiner· 26 Apr 2026
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