Amazon’s Gilroy Data Center Is Under Construction. Its Commitments Are Now the Test

It was not an environmental exemption. The state notice of determination records that the City of Gilroy prepared an environmental-impact report, made mitigation measures conditions of approval and adopted a mitigation-monitoring plan. It also records a finding that the project will have a significant environmental impact and the adoption of a statement of overriding considerations.

Those are important distinctions. Approval means the city found a way to permit the development with its stated conditions; it does not mean every concern raised during its review disappeared. A later report, available only in part in the retained record, describes the project as a $2 billion facility and says many residents learned of it after construction began. The cost figure is that report’s characterization, not a cost stated in the city approval.

Power figures describe different scopes

Phase I requires a 49-MW connection to Pacific Gas & Electric, according to both the city record and a local account of the project description. Its emergency equipment is specified as 25 generators rated at 2.5 MW for servers and one 600-kW generator for essential building functions. The approval also allows off-site transmission work and a possible future battery-energy-storage system, or comparable backup system, of up to 50 MW.

Amazon separately says PG&E will provide a dedicated 98-MW connection to the campus and that it will cover the required new energy infrastructure. The city’s Phase I figure and Amazon’s campus-level statement should not be turned into a single measurement of current operating demand. Nor do they demonstrate an effect on household rates. Amazon says its arrangements mean residents will not pay higher electricity bills; the retained public record does not supply an independent local rate analysis.

There is counterweight to the most sweeping worries, too. Pamela Leonard, Silicon Valley Clean Energy’s deputy director of marketing and communications, said the agency already serves data centers and that capacity can be built with adequate planning and lead time, in a report on the project. That is a utility-agency view of planning capacity, not a guarantee about future prices or the facility’s eventual load.

Amazon says outside-air cooling will serve the Gilroy facilities 97% of the year; water-based cooling is used roughly 3% of the time (company-reported). Source: AWS Gilroy project site.

Water, jobs and carbon claims need their qualifiers

Amazon says each Gilroy building will use about 2 million gallons of water a year for cooling, for a combined 4 million gallons, and that outside-air cooling will serve the facilities 97% of the year. It says reclaimed water will be used for cooling when the utility makes the necessary infrastructure available. The word “when” matters: it makes recycled water a future infrastructure condition, not a description of every day of initial operations.

The company also says it will coordinate with Silicon Valley Clean Energy to purchase 100% carbon-free electricity, pay for required infrastructure and create hundreds of construction and related jobs. Those are company commitments and forecasts. Amazon says it cannot guarantee a specified number of local construction jobs, even while encouraging its contractors and subcontractors to hire locally.

Residents and organizers have focused on precisely those conditions. Landon Sepulveda of Silicon Valley Resistance said the group wanted clarity on potable-water use before recycled-water infrastructure is operating, drought plans, a possible second phase and potential AI use. A report on Amazon’s June open house says opponents also sought independent monitoring, local hiring requirements and an agreement limiting expansion beyond Phase II.

Those requests should not be confused with findings that the project will cause rate increases, water shortages, battery fires or AI-related harms. They are requests for limits and evidence. A resident-response report similarly found that some people had not heard of the project until work had started, while Amazon pointed to its planned substation, reclaimed-water use and carbon-free-energy commitment.

What needs to be shown before operations begin

The next meaningful test is operational, not rhetorical. Before Amazon’s stated December 2026 target, the city and developer can make the record easier to evaluate by disclosing:

• whether the recycled-water infrastructure is available and what water source will be used until it is;
• the commissioned electricity connection and the final backup-power design, including whether a battery system is pursued;
• the status of the environmental mitigation and monitoring measures; and
• the scope and schedule of any Phase II decision.

The permit is in place. What remains unsettled is whether residents receive enough specific, public evidence to judge compliance as a permitted campus becomes an operating one.