On September 11, 2026, Columbus City Council held its third hearing on high water usage data centers, focusing on financial impacts and rate fairness. Council President Harden and Councilmember Weish introduced Ordinance 2560-2026, directing Columbus Water and Power (CWP) to develop a rate structure ensuring large users (including data centers and heavy industrial facilities) pay their fair share of infrastructure costs, rather than shifting the burden to residents. The hearing also reviewed revisions to water conservation and decommissioning policies and introduced a behind-the-meter generation draft.
This afternoon as we uh host uh one of a continuation of hearings on high uh water usage data centers uh at City Hall. Uh earlier this February, Council kicked off a discussion about data centers in our community. Since then, Councilmember Weish and his team have been working to translate what we have heard into a legislative package uh for which council is holding its now third hearing on. Much of that package is focuses on mitigating the environmental impacts of these data centers. But in this press conference and in this hearing, we're talking about the financial impacts, both for people's pockets and for our city's budget. What led us to this moment actually began last November when the administration asked council to raise utility rates. I want to give kudos to Councilmember Weish, who was able to negotiate the rates down from what they were asking for. But I was still concerned then that while enormous new users were coming on to our regional water system and requiring massive expensive infrastructure build-out to serve them, that our own residents should not fit the bill fit the bill for that growth. Ultimately, what got me to a yes was an amendment to the legislation from Councilmember Weiss requiring Columbus Water and Power to study this exact issue to figure out what we are charging these high volume users versus what it actually costs to serve them. CWP did that work and came back to us in June. And what they found is that there are really two things that we need to think about. First, there's how much water you use, and then there's how much water you need at one time. If a customer uses roughly the same amount all the time, then our water department can plan for that. But imagine a customer whose demand suddenly jumps to five or ten times the normal level. Our system still has to be big enough to handle that peak. We need we need enough treatment capacity, enough pumps, big enough pipes, enough water available when the customer needs it, and we have to pay for that capacity even when the customer is not using it. CWP found that some large users have peak demand several times their normal usage. One customer in the analysis had a peak nearly 12 times the average demand. This raises an issue in utility terms cause called cost causation. In plain English, it means if we're only charging a mega user for how much water they use, we're missing the broader point of how much infrastructure they're actually requiring. And if their demand requires us to build more stuff, we need to understand what that stuff costs, and they should be the ones to pay for it. This is about data centers fully covering their own cost and their fair share. And it isn't just about data centers. It's any kind of major commercial or industrial project. But especially it's important for data centers because of a gap in how we think of the economic benefits of them. Data centers would say they generate a lot of economic benefit. They would say that they bring private investment, create construction work, and generate revenue for the communities that they're located in. But we're not really building data centers here in Columbus proper. It's mostly other cities in Franklin County that are cutting data center deals. That's where revenue is flowing. While Columbus Water and Power gets stuck building the infrastructure necessary to provide the water without any of the revenue to help pay for it. This matters because we're entering a period of enormous investment in our water system. Historically, Columbus had extra capacity. Much of that infrastructure needed to serve growth was already here and already paid for. But CWP is telling us that we're reaching a point where future growth will increasingly require new infrastructure. That's why we're planning for the the home uh we're planning the home road water plant, which will add 48 million gallons of water capacity per day, along with major transmission infrastructure necessary to move that water. And that new infrastructure isn't free. It's going to cost taxpayers, us, you and me, billions. And someone has to pay for it. I don't want a Columbus family that's been here for 30 years or neighborhood small business to have to shoulder those costs. CWP's own analysis concluded that without a more appropriate model for cost recovery, more of the infrastructure costs associated with new growth could ultimately fall on existing customers through future water rates. So last November, we said we would study the issue, and we have studied it. Now we're asking CWP to take the next step. Ordinance 2560-2026 appeared on first read on Monday and will come for a vote on September 28th. The ordinance directs Columbus Water and Power to come back to us with a recommendation, which council will take up before the end of the year. They will look at that demand. They will look at the infrastructure required to serve it. They will look at what it cost and develop a rate structure that accounts for those costs. The utility advisory board will review it, and then any actual rate change will ultimately come back to council for discussion and a vote. Look, the economic benefits of growth matter, but so do the cost of them.