News that a tech company wants to build a $5.1 billion data center on 75 acres of industrial land in southeast Salem drew immediate community outrage and support.

Salem leaders are stressing that the Oakline at Mill Creek project by Verrus is still in its infancy and they want residents to voice their concerns and be included in the public development process.

“There is a misconception that the negotiations have already been done,” City Manager Krishna Namburi told the Statesman Journal.

Verrus has not submitted a land use application for the spot on the Mill Creek Corporate Center campus at Turner Road and Deer Park Drive.

“It’s not a done deal,” Namburi said.

Tentative timelines for the project show the land use process taking up the bulk of 2026. A public input period would take place before plan review and permitting in 2027. Construction would last into 2029.

Supporters said the project would bring in high-paying, yearslong construction, carpentry and electrician jobs. Also, expectations are that the development would add $9 million per year to Salem’s General Fund and $1.5 million to the city’s livability levy that funds the library, parks and senior center.

City officials confirmed that Verrus received approval for a standard three-year state Enterprise Zone property tax exemption from Marion County. Council approval was not required.

After that exemption expires, taxing districts would begin receiving property-tax revenue from the development.

Project opponents spoke out against the data center’s potential water and electricity use as well as the environmental impact.

A team collected 8,636 signatures within a week for a Change.org petition to stop the development of the center. Calls for action spread among local organizations, encouraging residents to protest before the July 27 Salem City Council meeting and testify in opposition.

Verrus CEO Nelson Abramson said he understands that Salem residents have questions about the project’s water use, noise and environmental impacts, and his team welcomes that scrutiny.

“While Oakline is still early in the process and we have not yet submitted a formal application with detailed building schematics or drawings, our next-generation data center is designed from the ground up to minimize water use, maximize energy efficiency and support power grid reliability,” he said.

Namburi said the city is committed to keeping community members as informed and engaged as possible throughout the process. Some opponents criticized the city for entering into a nondisclosure agreement with Verrus for over a year.

Namburi said the city entered into that agreement through the Salem economic development group SEDCOR in March 2025 when potential project locations in the city were floated. Such agreements are very common when companies are exploring the possibility of developing or expanding into new cities, she said.

The nondisclosure agreement was lifted in early July.

Verrus chose to begin this public conversation before the design is final because it wants to work directly with the city and community to help shape the project, Abramson said.

“We are going public earlier than most others would to demonstrate what makes Verrus different,” he said. “The Salem community should expect developers like Verrus to be accountable to what we say at each stage of the process. Know that our core beliefs start with building a new kind of data center that’s better for the grid and a far more efficient user of our natural resources like water.”

Namburi and Community Planning and Development Director Kristin Retherford stressed that the city’s role is to follow the legally required land-use and permitting processes, which require an application, reviews and public input, rather than advocate for or against the project.

The proposed site is zoned for industrial use and a data center is one of the permitted uses, Namburi said.

Preliminary renderings for the project show a substation and two-story buildings that could have a footprint of up to 1.8 million square feet.

The location is near Corban University, the Dollar General Distribution Center, the Genesco warehouse and the former Mill Creek Correctional Facility.

The Mill Creek Corporate Center and zoning framework were established in 2005 to prepare the land for industrial development, Retherford said. Salem’s code was updated in 2014 to allow data centers in employment center zones.

State, federal and city law requires Salem to evaluate projects according to established guidelines.

“We’re not at a point where we can say no data centers in Mill Creek,” Retherford said.

Council could make a motion to rezone properties to not allow data centers going forward.

But the city and public can voice concerns about the environmental and water impact through the lengthy land use and development process.

If a formal application is filed, a public notice would be sent to neighboring property owners and the Southeast Mill Creek Association. A 14-day public comment period would occur, and any appeal would trigger a public hearing.

“We will be evaluating a very long list of community impacts,” Retherford said.

Jeff Bladen, head of energy and policy at Silicon Valley-based Verrus, said the company specifically seeks communities that already have land designated for industrial use. He also cited Salem’s skilled workforce, apprenticeship programs and potential partnerships with local colleges as additional factors drawing Verrus to the city.

“Data centers need to do better,” he said. “Verrus was really the first company coming along to try and build a truly new and better kind of data center.”

Company officials said the development’s water consumption would be low, and Namburi said staff would carefully evaluate water consumption projections to ensure the city’s long-term water needs would not be put at risk.

Retherford said measures are in place with the city and agencies like the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to hold companies accountable if they do not follow through on their water consumption and environmental impact promises.

Verrus leaders said that the data center in Salem will be different. Unlike legacy data centers, it is designed to support the local power grid, conserve water with a closed-loop cooling system, minimize noise with large-scale batteries instead of diesel generators, and contribute meaningfully to the community and economy over the long term, Bladen said.

Company officials claim the water use will be significantly less than that of an 18-hole golf course.

“I think it’s important to recognize that people’s concerns are valid,” Bladen said.

The proposed Salem facility, which would take multiple years to permit and build, would be one of Verrus’ first. The company’s quest to build a data center in Lyon Township, Michigan, has received substantial community pushback but is nearing final approval.

Verrus leadership said community engagement will be a key part of the process going forward. Already, the company’s conversations with city leaders led them to commit to preserving a grove of heritage oak trees on the property.

“We look forward to customizing our approach for Salem addressing common concerns raised and showing how community input is influencing the final design,” Abramson said.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in The Statesman Journal and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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BATON ROUGE, La. — An ambitious project to restore a rapidly vanishing stretch of Louisiana coastline that was devastated by the 2010 Gulf oil spill has been thrown deeper into disarray amid claims by Gov. Jeff Landry that his predecessor concealed an unfavorable study that it was feared could imperil the estimated $2.92 billion effort.

The controversy was even predicted by the previous administration as it grappled with how to handle conflicting environmental analyses for the project, according to a confidential memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The nine-page document, prepared by five attorneys working for then-Gov. John Bel Edwards‘ administration, sheds new light on a study Landry says was improperly withheld from the public and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as it was approving a permit for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project.

The stakes were so high the attorneys even weighed whether state officials could face federal charges for withholding from the Corps a report that the diversion would generate significantly less land than another modeling projection used in a federal review.

Prosecution seemed “extremely unlikely,” the lawyers wrote to the heads of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which oversees the diversion project, but they added that “the severe consequences and criminalization of the action warranted mention.”

The attorneys also warned that the Corps might suspend or revoke the permit if it discovered the study after the fact, the 2022 memo shows, foreshadowing actions taken last month when the Corps cited “deliberately withheld” information among its reasons for suspending its permit for the project. The move halts construction despite more than half a billion dollars being spent.

“They hid the bad stuff and only showed the (Corps) the version they liked,” Landry wrote in a post on X. “Science is easy when you just delete the inconvenient parts!”

Edwards denied his administration withheld information from the Corps and stated that “Gov. Landry’s accusations are demonstrably false.”

“When all the facts are presented, the public will see that his administration has played political games and botched this important project,” Edwards stated.

Landry countered in his own statement that “the facts speak for themselves.”

Amid the finger-pointing, conservation proponents have called the report in question a red herring that Landry is using to tank the project. The diversion, funded mostly from a settlement arising from BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, is the largest of its kind in Louisiana’s history.

Possible legal consequences

The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion would puncture levees in southeast Louisiana, diverting some of the river’s sediment-rich flow to restore wetlands. The long-delayed project was intended to mitigate a disappearing coastline caused by a range of factors such as climate change-induced sea-level rise and the river’s vast levee system. Ground was broken in 2023, but state and federal litigation has stalled it.

Opponents have blasted its ballooning cost and crippling effects on the local fishing and oyster industries. Landry has said the project would “break” Louisiana’s culture of shrimp and oyster harvesting, likening it to government efforts a century ago to punish schoolchildren for speaking Cajun French.

Earlier this year, Landry’s administration approached the Corps with a list of concerns about the project, including a 2022 study it said “does not appear to have been disclosed to the public nor considered by all necessary persons within the Corps.”

Officials working for the state at the time defended how the report in question was handled, saying it had been focused on analyzing maintenance and operational costs related to the diversion and was not intended to be part of the federal environmental impact statement process.

The report, prepared by AECOM Technical Services and a subcontractor, produced “inconsistent” results such as a significantly lower projected land creation — as few as 7 square miles compared to the 21 square miles estimated under the primary model, according to the confidential memo.

Officials familiar with the study said its lower projection resulted from improperly accounting for sea level rise and underestimating the river’s flow. The memo also pointed to the need for “significant dredging” to maintain the diversion channel, which Landry’s administration now says will cost tens of millions of dollars.

In the memo, the attorneys outlined a series of “reputational concerns” about withholding the study and warned it would be more difficult to keep “controlling the narrative” if the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority “is on the defensive.”

An informal discussion

The memo noted the Corps and other federal agencies could delay the project for years if they attempted to integrate the modeling results into their environmental impact analysis. Failing to formally disclose the modeling results to federal agencies like the Corps, the attorneys warned, also would leave the project vulnerable to litigation.

They suggested the Edwards administration “informally discuss” the issue with federal agencies and then strategize the best way to “formally” enter it into the public record for the agencies to review.

The report’s findings eventually were verbally communicated to at least one Corps official, who indicated it was insignificant, according to multiple former Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority officials familiar with the exchange. But the complete analysis itself was not submitted into the public record, nor was the official’s response at the time, they said.

The former state officials weren’t authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.

Col. Cullen Jones, head of the Corps’ New Orleans District, told Landry’s administration last month that the Corps recently conducted a “technical review” of the modeling analysis in question and concluded it “would not affect” the permit.

But Jones said the Corps suspended the project’s permit in part because “the state deliberately withheld information … that the state knew it should provide.”

Project’s future in doubt

The Corps also pointed to actions taken by Landry’s administration, including a 90-day work stoppage announced last month amid plans to study an alternative “smaller diversion” and claims the state can’t afford the project.

It’s unclear how Landry intends to respond to the permit’s suspension. The state could dispute the permit suspension. At that point, the Corps could revoke or modify the permit as it sees fit.

Louisiana’s coastal agency earmarked about $573 million in its 2025 budget for the project, an amount now being reviewed by the legislature. Last fall, federal agencies tasked with managing Deepwater Horizon settlement money warned that if Louisiana backs out of or alters the Mid-Barataria Diversion project, money allocated for it would need to be returned.

Lauren Bourg, director of the National Audubon Society’s Mississippi River Delta program, told lawmakers that ending or altering the project “sends the message that any infrastructure project in this state may be undone by a few stakeholders who engage in politics with the right people, distorting the scientific and engineering principles upon which all of these projects are grounded.”

But many people in southeast Louisiana’s fishing industry applauded the move to halt the project.

“If all this water comes down, it’s going to kill everything,” said Mitch Jurisich, chairman of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force.

Editor’s note: Brook reported from New Orleans.

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By Gillian Flaccus

The Associated Press

PORTLAND — Federal regulators have issued a final environmental impact statement that supports the demolition of four massive dams on the Klamath River to save imperiled migratory salmon.

The staff’s recommendation, which largely echoes an earlier draft opinion, tees up a vote on the roughly $500 million project by the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission later this year.

The removal of the four hydroelectric dams on the lower Klamath River – one in southern Oregon and three in California – would be the largest dam demolition project in U.S. history.

The aging dams near the Oregon-California border were built before current environmental regulations and essentially cut the 253-mile-long river in half for migrating salmon. Those fish have been hit hard by warming waters and low river flows caused by severe drought and competition for water with agricultural interests.

The project on California’s second-largest river would be at the vanguard of a push to demolish dams in the U.S. as the structures age and become less economically viable and as concerns grow about their environmental impact, particularly on fish.

Northern California tribes have been fighting for years to remove the dams. They applauded the latest news.

“We can see the light at the end of the dam removal tunnel,” Karuk Chairman Russell ‘Buster’ Attebery stated. “I am so proud of everyone in our river communities that have worked so hard for the past 20 years to realize our vision of river restoration.”

Coho salmon from the river are listed as threatened under federal and California law, and their population has fallen by anywhere from 52 percent to 95 percent. Spring chinook salmon, once the Klamath Basin’s largest run, have dwindled by 98 percent.

Fall chinook, the last to persist in any significant numbers, have been so meager in the past few years that the Yurok Tribe canceled fishing last year for the first time in memory. In 2017, they bought fish at a grocery store for their annual salmon festival.

In recent years, as many as 90 percent of juvenile salmon sampled tested positive for a disease that flourishes when river flows are low.

If the dams were to remain, power company PacifiCorp would likely have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit the structures to comply with today’s environmental laws. Also, the utility has said the electricity generated by the dams no longer makes up a significant part of its power portfolio.

The original demolition proposal foundered after regulators initially balked at allowing PacifiCorp to completely exit the project.

A historic deal reached in 2020 made Oregon and California equal partners in the demolition with a nonprofit entity called the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, which will oversee the project. That deal also added $45 million to the project’s $450 million budget after concerns that the available funds weren’t enough to cover any overruns.

Oregon, California, and PacifiCorp, which operates the hydroelectric dams and is owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway, each provided one-third of the additional funds.

Some critics have said Oregon and California governors were irresponsible to assume financial responsibility for cost overruns and object that part of the project is financed by a voter-approved California water bond.

Some local and state officials worry about flood control and residents who live around a large reservoir created by one of the dams have unsuccessfully sued to stop the project.

The dams that would be demolished are the Iron Gate, Copco 1 and Copco 2 in California and the J.C. Boyle in Oregon.

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