KOLN reported that selecting blacked-out text in state filings submitted to the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy, and Environment recovered figures that Google-affiliated entities had claimed as confidential trade secrets. The disclosure surfaced data on water consumption, peak electricity demand, and expected tax benefits for facilities in Lincoln, Omaha, and Papillion.
The Lincoln facility operates under the affiliated name Agate LLC. State filings had kept the basic resource costs out of public view until this disclosure, according to KOLN’s reporting.
What the Numbers Actually Show
Agate LLC’s Lincoln facility reported 52.65 megawatts of peak electrical demand, a measure of maximum draw at a given moment rather than total annual consumption.
Annual water use at the Lincoln site came to 13.299 megagallons, or 13.299 million gallons, attributed to cooling towers, evaporative systems, and site operations. KOLN noted that figure fills roughly 20 Olympic-size swimming pools and represents less than half of Lincoln’s reported single-day city water usage on Sept. 29; those comparisons use different time and accounting bases, so they should be read as illustrative rather than direct equivalents…