Google is looking to develop up to six data centers near the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Linn County, Iowa.

Linn County Supervisors revealed that Google had shared its interest in developing in the area during the October 6 meeting.

As reported by several local publications, including KGAN, the cloud giant is now funding a water usage study for the area to look at the impact such a development would have.

The proposal follows the June 2025 pledge from Google to invest $7 billion in expanding its data center footprint in Iowa. The company said at the time that this would go towards the development of a new campus in Cedar Rapids and the expansion of its existing campus in Council Bluffs.

The data centers are being proposed for unincorporated areas near the Duane Arnold Energy Center, a decommissioned nuclear reactor. The energy center entered operation in 1975, but in 2020, the plant's cooling towers were damaged, and repairs were deemed uneconomical. This year has seen proposals to restart the plant, with NextEra granted permission to reconnect the plant to the grid in September 2025. FERC filings suggest it could be powered up in Q1 of 2028 at the earliest.

The Board of Supervisors revealed that Google itself is in talks with DAEC regarding getting the center back up and running.

The water usage study will look not only at the water needs for any data centers, but also for the nuclear site, should it be restarted, or if gas generators were used.

No timeline for the data center project has yet been shared, with discussions still in place. Linn County is currently working on three ordinances related to the project: a data center ordinance, a nuclear power ordinance, and a gas power ordinance.

According to Linn County Director of Policy and Administration Darrin Gage, this is the "first time the county is considering a data center." Notably, however, DataCenterMap already lists two data centers within the county boundaries - an Ark Data Centers facility and the Enseva Hiawatha Datacenter.

Linn County is located in eastern Iowa, and Cedar Rapids is its county seat. Linn County sits mostly to the north of Cedar Rapids.

While Linn County specifically may not have seen many applications, Cedar Rapids as a whole is currently developing a QTS data center that broke ground in August 2025. Google is also working on a $576 million project on the southwest side of Cedar Rapids.