The developer of a Sand Springs data center project appeared at the Osage Mineral Council meeting but had few details to offer about how the center will be used.
Although the project passed the Sand Springs City Council earlier this month, White Rose Partners arrived at the Feb. 18 meeting without a formal proposal and instead offered to answer questions about Project Spring, which will span roughly 800 acres and sit partially within Osage County. Developers previously confirmed Google as the end-user.
White Rose representative Jeff Eigenbrood said Google’s preliminary site plan includes three data center buildings and one office building, with “about 50 acres” of building coverage and “equipment yards and roads and infrastructure at 80 acres each.” The layout was intentionally designed, he said, to “orient the buildings in the center of the site to minimize impact.”
Eigenbrood said the first phase will use air cooling, resulting in “very minimal water usage for cooling purposes.” An existing six-inch water line from the City of Sand Springs will supply “bathrooms, sinks (and) general office uses.”
Google has requested flexibility for future water-cooled buildings, which could require additional infrastructure.
“When and if they decide to change the strategy for cooling for the second building, that might necessitate an upgrade of that six-inch water line… but that will be at least a year into the future,” said Eigenbrood.
When asked whether Google might seek water from other jurisdictions, Eigenbrood said, “Google’s only going to use municipal water from Sand Springs.”
He noted future phases could include water-cooled buildings, a point of interest for the council given national conversations about data center water use.
When asked what Google will actually do at the facility – including whether it will involve artificial intelligence – Eigenbrood did not give specifics.
“They don’t disclose exactly what they do at each facility, but generally speaking, Google has a very large cloud compute business,” he said. “Essentially, they lease out server space, and obviously they also have AI training. They haven’t disclosed exactly what they’ll be doing at this particular facility, but effectively, either way, it’ll be a large warehouse filled with server computers and equipment.”
Council members pressed for clarity around long-term resource use and local impact. White Rose framed the site as a “clean” development projected to bring up to 1,000 jobs, though they did not clarify how many of those would be permanent versus construction-phase roles.
This discussion follows recent public pushback on the project at the Feb. 3 Sand Springs City Council meeting.
This was informed by Russell Cobb’s Documenter notes from the Osage Minerals Council meeting Feb. 18. If you’re interested in becoming a Documenter, visit us at documenters.org.
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