Environmental Group Sues Racine to Release Microsoft Data Center’s Estimated Water Usage

The City of Racine is being sued by Midwest Environmental Advocates on behalf of Milwaukee Riverkeeper after the city allegedly failed to deliver a document describing the estimated water usage at the then-proposed data center in Mount Pleasant under open records laws.

Wisconsin law states that a response to a record request must be made “as soon as practicable and without delay.” The timeline of the request spanned over seven months, from February to September. The document revealed an estimated water usage of 8.4 million gallons per year.

As artificial intelligence grows, its data needs somewhere to go. Data centers are Wisconsin’s newest residents, but not without some uncertainty. Transparency is proving to be a pressing issue for many communities welcoming these projects, which was the core motivation for the original request to the City of Racine.

The Timeline

On Feb. 4, 2025, Cheryl Nenn inquired to the Mayor of the City of Racine about the estimated water use at the then-proposed data center in Mount Pleasant on behalf of Milwaukee Riverkeeper, where she works.

Almost two weeks later, on Feb. 17, Nenn had not heard back. She submitted a written public records request to the City of Racine’s Water Utility Executive Director, Dr. Anjuman Islam. Under the Wisconsin Open Records Law, a response to a record request must be made “as soon as practicable and without delay.”

The request sought a single record, stating:

“[Milwaukee Riverkeeper] is trying to get an estimate of how much water the facility will be using on a daily, monthly, annual basis. If there is one document that contains the most recent estimate of water consumption/use, that would be sufficient to satisfy this request. We don’t need all the records, that seemingly contain the same information and would take months to produce. We are looking for quality and not quantity of information, in the hope that your staff time can be minimized and response time can be expedited.”

On Feb. 20, Nicholas Wiltgen, Executive Assistant in the Office of the Mayor, wrote back, directing Nenn to submit a formal record request to the Racine Water Utility.

“I believe I already submitted a records request to the Water Utility last week, but haven’t heard back,” Nenn said in her email response.

A follow-up email was sent to Dr. Islam on March 6 after still no response.

By June 2, over 100 days since Nenn’s original request, she sent another follow-up email to Dr. Islam, this time copying the City of Racine Mayor and City Attorney. Less than 30 minutes later, Dr. Islam finally responded, saying, “I cannot disclose the information you requested due to confidentiality. I would recommend you contact Microsoft for any official answers.”

Shortly after Dr. Islam’s denial of the request, the Racine City Attorney’s Office responded, acknowledging the request and stating that it would be processed as soon as practicable and without delay.

After almost four months of waiting for a single request, Milwaukee Riverkeeper contacted Midwest Environmental Advocates, a nonprofit law center that advocates for environmental rights and issues, to step in and assist them with the records request.

After Attorney Michael Greif became involved, the timeline with the City of Racine is as follows, according to the filing:

The filing of the suit against the City of Racine got things into action. Just two days after the suit was filed, the city finally responded with the requested document, revealing a projected water usage of 8.4 million gallons a year.

The Need for Transparency

A massive theme of the recent data center surge is transparency, or the current lack thereof.

“The city of Racine’s process was disappointing from a public transparency perspective,” Greif said.

The driving force behind Milwaukee Riverkeeper’s original request was their belief that the public has a right to know the amount of water these massive projects will consume. The information isn’t readily available to the public, but the record request evidently encountered roadblocks, too.

“We believe that these projects need to go in eyes wide open. The public has a right to know how much water consumption and return water is going to be used from the Great Lakes, and that information should not be subject to a nondisclosure agreement,” Jennifer Bolger Breceda, Executive Director at Milwaukee Riverkeeper, said. “Some data centers use a lot of water; some data centers use a lot of energy. At the end of the day, we are not the experts, and that is something that our elected municipalities, public utilities, and the data centers should be providing.”

A Statewide Issue

Southeastern Wisconsin is just one of the regions of the country experiencing fast-tracked data center development, as seen in Port Washington, Caledonia and Kenosha.

Residents in Caledonia who opposed the project found their research and arguments to be successful with the Village Board. For communities that are already experiencing the construction of these data centers, their concerns can’t make an impact. But they may also be feeling left in the dark, too.

“These are huge projects that are going to dramatically impact the communities that they’re put in,” Greif said. “Not only because the data center itself has a huge footprint, but the amount of electrical infrastructure that has to be built to power their very large energy demands is also significant.”

The Data Center Gold Rush

Breceda likened the influx of data centers in Wisconsin and across the country to a gold rush.

“Do we need all of them?” she said. “It’s kind of like a gold rush, where we have so many businesses coming in to be the first to build and provide the data center service, but yet, is it duplicative? Will this be outmoded technology in a decade? Will we have stranded utilities that the public has to pay for? Is there a plan to mothball these and get rid of them in a proper way when they are done, and we’ve moved on to the next level of technology?”

These are questions communities don’t yet have the answer to, but they must brace for the potential costs of this huge industry moving into their small towns.

Greif echoed a similar sentiment.

“If the tech companies decide to locate somewhere else or the technology becomes obsolete in five years, or for whatever reason these facilities end up using a lot less energy than was predicted, we have all this infrastructure that was built to serve them, and the public is potentially going to end up paying for that in the long run,” he said. “That, combined with the long-term climate impacts from the utilities building these gas plants and delaying coal plant retirements, is my biggest concern.”

What Communities Can Do

As tech companies like Microsoft and OpenAI continue to move towards the Great Lakes, communities across the Midwest find themselves in an uproar, asking for transparency from their local elected officials.

Breceda said that people need to get connected to their local community more than anything. These projects come to the public “shovel-ready,” and there’s often little room to make a change. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get involved “early and often,” she said.

That’s why Milwaukee Riverkeeper tried to access water usage information. There is a need to understand what is going on in our communities, Breceda said.

Greif also emphasized the importance of getting involved locally. He cited the city of Menomonie as an example of community efforts halting the data center project. Community feedback pushed Microsoft out of Caledonia, too.

“People need to talk to their neighbors, talk to their elected officials, go to meetings, try to understand as much as possible what is happening and how it will impact them, and stay involved,” Breceda said.

Media Milwaukee has reached out to Racine’s Mayor, Cory Mason, for comment.