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.
The broader state picture is considerably larger. Six Nebraska data centers had submitted reports by Sept. 30, with combined annual water consumption of approximately 765 million gallons; that total reflects only the facilities that had reported by that date and may not represent every Nebraska data center.
Google’s Papillion facility, identified in filings as Fireball Group LLC, reported 547.88 megagallons for 2025 alone. That figure accounts for roughly 72 percent of the six-facility total, according to KOLN’s account of the recovered documents.
The Tax Figures Behind the Redaction
The same redaction failure reportedly surfaced expected 2025 tax benefits tied to all three Google-affiliated Nebraska facilities.
Figures recovered from the DWEE documents, as reported by KOLN, show Agate LLC in Lincoln expecting $55,822,472; Fireball Group LLC in Papillion expecting $39,171,573.39; and Westwood Solutions LLC in Omaha expecting $22,558,881. The filings attributed these amounts to sales-and-use-tax exemptions under the Nebraska Advantage Act.
The filings also stated that no rebates under that program had been received to date. No incentive payments under the ImagiNE Nebraska Act had been received or were expected, according to the same documents.
Why It Was Redacted, and How It Wasn’t
Google-affiliated entities cited Neb. Rev. Stat. sections 81-1527 and 84-712.05, along with NAC Title 115, Chapter 2, to claim electricity and water figures as trade secrets, though the available materials do not establish that each claim was formally adjudicated.
The redaction failed at the technical level: the underlying text remained selectable in the PDF documents. Whether DWEE formally evaluated and approved each confidentiality claim, or whether the agency has since corrected the documents, remains unclear.
KOLN filed a public-records request with DWEE on Sept. 30 seeking the redacted information. KOLN’s report did not identify a formal Google response addressing the figures, the trade-secret claims, or the redaction failure.
State Oversight and What You Can Access
Gov. Jim Pillen signed an executive order creating a Data Center Task Force under DWEE to examine water resources, electricity systems, and local infrastructure impacts.
The order, signed in July 2026, also directed state agencies to coordinate review of data-center proposals and their resource impacts. Nebraska residents can view submitted reports through DWEE’s Public Assistance Viewer by entering “DCR” in the “DEQ Program” field.
The episode may prompt DWEE to improve redaction procedures and clarify which data legitimately qualify as protectable trade secrets. Whether those standards will change remains an unresolved public-records and policy question.
