The Little Rock Board of Directors is voting this week on new data center regulations that will strike a balance between promoting economic development and protecting residents and the environment, according to Mayor Frank Scott Jr.
But according to a city panel on the environment, Scott’s proposal doesn’t go far enough. The Little Rock Sustainability Commission is urging the board to delay its vote and instead “transparently engage” with concerned residents about data centers.
If that’s not possible, the board should at least strengthen the proposed rules, the commission said.
The Sustainability Commission discussed the matter at a Wednesday meeting in which the panel also heard from the head of Central Arkansas Water about the expected water usage of a data center that Google is planning to build at the Port of Little Rock. The five primary buildings at the complex each are expected to be approximately 285,300 square feet, for a total square footage of 1.43 million.
Tad Bohannon, the water utility’s chief executive, said the Google data center may draw up to 4 million gallons per day, though its average daily usage will likely be closer to 1 million gallons.
Central Arkansas Water’s average consumption across its entire service area is approximately 67 million gallons per day, according to Bohannon.
NEW REGULATIONS
The city board is scheduled to consider an ordinance to adopt the proposed data center rules at its Tuesday evening meeting. The regulations would include standards on noise, water consumption, wastewater discharge and property setbacks.
If approved, the regulations would apply to the Google data center, a city spokesman has said, because the developer has not applied for city permits yet.
“While we commend the Mayor’s Office and the City Board of Directors for moving quickly to take action on a resource-intense, rapidly evolving development type, we ask that the city temporarily table this ordinance,” members of the Sustainability Commission wrote in a letter addressed to the mayor and Board of Directors recently.
The proposed standards should align with the city’s stated goals on sustainability and clean energy, the letter said.
The commission supports many of the city’s economic development activities and recognizes that sustainable industrial projects offer benefits to the city, Sustainability Commission members wrote.
“However, we have serious concerns about the electricity use, water use, land use, air quality impacts, and noise pollution profile of data center developments and worry that these burdens will be passed on to the surrounding neighborhoods and Central Arkansas residents, more broadly,” the letter said.
Members also asked city leaders to share more information about the project’s potential tax revenue, environmental impact and utility contracts, writing that details have been “scant” to date.
The language in the draft ordinance should be strengthened to mitigate risks posed by this sort of project, members said.
“The ordinance largely asks data center developments to meet existing standards, have will-serve letters from utilities, and asks that developers create resource use plans,” the letter said. “We ask that the City push these projects, which stand to be among the largest electricity and water users in the City with little public benefit to show for it, to meet a higher standard than other industrial development.”
Tougher standards could include preventing projects from generating electricity on-site from fossil fuel sources or mandating that data centers be the first users to curb water and electricity usage at times when demand is peaking, the letter said.
The data center at the port is likely to draw more than 100 megawatts of electricity, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Sustainability Commission’s letter also noted that plans for the Google facility call for filling approximately 17 acres of wetlands and 6,500 linear-feet of streams within the Fourche Creek watershed, which runs counter to a goal of preserving natural habitats laid out in the city’s sustainability action plan. The Board of Directors adopted the plan in 2025.
The commission is made up of volunteers appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the board.
During the meeting Wednesday, members voted unanimously to send the letter. Wesley Prewett, the outgoing chair of the Sustainability Commission, provided it to City Director Kathy Webb via email the following day.
Webb, the Ward 3 representative, serves as the board’s liaison to the Sustainability Commission and attended the meeting Wednesday.
In addition to the port data center, Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc., is pursuing a $4 billion data center in West Memphis.
Measures authorizing the sale of land and tax incentives tied to the future data center at the Little Rock port were swiftly approved without discussion when they came before the Board of Directors in April 2025. At the time, Scott hailed the fact that the city had been selected for what was described as a $1 billion investment from an as-yet-unnamed Fortune 100 company.
Later that year, board members agreed to rezone and annex land at the port to accommodate the data center, as well as a new Amazon warehouse.
While he said he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of the commission, Prewett asked Webb on Wednesday to stress to other officials that “the data center episode has demonstrated that there is distrust in the economic development process.”
If officials examined the way they do business and pursued reforms, “it would go a long way to increase trust in local government,” Prewett said.
“I agree with you 100%,” Webb replied.
WATER USAGE
Bohannon told the Sustainability Commission that the developer of the data center at the port will have to bear the costs of installing additional infrastructure, like any other developer that builds in an area that does not have adequate water service.
The increased water supply at the port is likely to attract more businesses as a result, according to the Central Arkansas Water chief.
He argued that Central Arkansas Water is not in the business of selecting what facilities — including data centers — are built and where.
“Our job is to provide water for the community,” he said. “We’re not a zoning organization, we’re not a regulatory organization. You know, that’s not what we do. (The) community says, ‘We’re going to do this in this area. What’s it take to get water to be delivered there?’ And I don’t mean that as a cop-out.”
The data center’s expected maximum demand for water is 4 million gallons a day, Bohannon said. An average day likely is going to be around 1 million gallons per day, based on what other water utilities are seeing, he said.
Bohannon said “max day numbers” are only seen about 10 times per year. During the winter, data centers use “very little amounts of water,” he said. Data centers use water for cooling the computers they contain.
Though Central Arkansas Water consumes an average of 67 million gallons per day, the amount fluctuates greatly throughout the year. On a minimum day, demand is about 42 millions gallons. Those days typically occur in winter months like January and February.
The utility’s maximum demand of 126 million gallons per day was set during Arkansas’ brutally hot summer of 2012, Bohannon said. Between its two treatment plants, the utility can treat up to 157 million gallons per day.
It’s not a problem for the utility to pull more than 120 million gallons from its reservoirs on a particular day because that level of demand is not being repeated over and over again for days at a time, he said.
“So we’ve got headroom,” Bohannon remarked.
When Prewett asked whether the data center would be the single-largest water user within the utility’s system, Bohannon said it would be the largest user at the port.
There are other large water users, Bohannon suggested, referencing the healthcare field.
Joseph Flaherty
Joseph Flaherty covers the city of Little Rock for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. A graduate of Middlebury College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, he has worked for the newspaper since 2020.
