Three permits in Morrow County authorize 346 diesel engines. The state counts 31 more data centers in siting.

Summary

The Governor's Data Center Advisory Committee says Oregon has about 123 active data centers and 31 more in the process of siting [DC]. On DEQ's older permit search we found 21 data-center sources holding an air permit, and we have read the full permit file for three of them: the three Amazon Data Services campuses in Boardman. Those three permits together authorize 346 diesel emergency engines with a calculated 842 megawatts of backup capacity, each campus under a 39-ton-a-year cap on nitrogen oxides. The other 18 permits are on the record and not yet read. Nothing issued after 2024-11-20 is on the older portal, so none of the 31 sites in siting can appear here yet.

Table A: the 21 permitted sources, 3 Read and 18 On record. Table B: six leads, none of which is a row until a DEQ document is found. The state's own count of 31 in siting and ~123 active [DC] is the frame; it is not a list, and the committee does not publish one.

How to read a grade

An Oregon grade says how much of a source's permit record this site has read on the date shown. It is not the Pennsylvania rubric: every row in Table A is an operating or permitted facility, so the question is not whether the project is real but whether its numbers are on the record.

Read

The permit and its review report have been read. The engine count, the size of each engine and the annual emission cap are quoted from the documents, and the document links are on the row.

On record

DEQ's search lists a permit and at least one document for the source. The documents have not been read, so the figure cells say so.

Lead

A DEQ document or a press report names the source, but no permit document has been located. Leads live in Table B and are never rows on the map.

The reading

Oregon's own committee counts 31 data centers in the process of siting: 19 wholesale, 5 powered shell, 8 hyperscale [DC]. It counts about 123 active facilities in 2025, up from 8 in 2000, four in five of them inside an urban growth boundary [DC]. It also says something about its own record that this site can confirm from the other side: information about data centers is "fragmented across state agencies, local governments, utilities, and private entities," and the committee sees value in a state-hosted system that would publish, among other things, "backup power, emissions from them, and any violations/penalties" and "facility development and locations" [DC]. That system is what Table A is a first draft of.

Twenty-one sources on DEQ's older search hold a Standard or Simple Air Contaminant Discharge Permit for a data center [LS]: nine Amazon campuses across Boardman, Umatilla and Hermiston; two in Prineville; three in The Dalles held by Design, LLC; and seven in Hillsboro. Three have been read in full. Amazon's PDX04 permit authorizes 96 engine-generator sets when complete [P04][RR04]; PDX109 authorizes 112 generator engines and 2 fire-pump engines [P109][RR109]; PDX170 authorizes 138 [P170][RR170]. Their calculated capacities are 224, 266 and 352 megawatts. Each carries the same 39-ton-a-year Plant Site Emission Limit for nitrogen oxides on non-emergency running, with a combined potential of 99 tons if the fuel cap were reached [P04][P109][P170]. Only the newest, PDX170, has after-treatment on its main engines: 78 of its 138 engines carry SCR, DOC and DPF; its 52 other main engines carry none, and no engine at PDX109 has any control device [RR170][RR109][RR04].

The committee's document notes that diesel backup generators are "nearly universally" deployed and are permitted to run "up to 100 hours/year for routine testing" without exceeding air standards, while declared emergencies "could exceed these limits" [DC]. PDX109's own annual reports show what routine running adds up to: 78,511 gallons of diesel and 10.15 tons of NOx in non-emergency operation over the twelve months to December 2023, a quarter of the way to its cap in its third year [AR109]. The same report self-reports a fire-pump engine that ran past its limit in December 2023; press says DEQ later fined the company $10,400 for it and for water violations at Hermiston [AR109][AVN]. The enforcement order has not been located.

What the record cannot show is the growth. Every permit in Table A predates 2024-11-20, the date DEQ's older portal stops [LS]. Press counts about 14 Amazon sites in the Lower Umatilla Basin against the nine here [OPB]; PDX109's generator-replacement modification went to public comment in March 2025 [EO]; two of the three Read permits have expired on paper and been renewed somewhere we have not looked. All of it is on Your DEQ Online [YDO]. The committee is taking public comment on its document until 2026-10-24 and expects to make final recommendations by December [DC]; a public, searchable permit record with a document behind every number is the answer to its transparency question that this site would give.

Oregon's rule in one page

• The permit. A data center's generators are permitted by DEQ under an Air Contaminant Discharge Permit: Simple for small sources, Standard for most generator fleets, and a federal Title V operating permit for the largest. DEQ also offers a streamlined permit for fleets built to Tier 4 [T4]. The Standard permit's Section 1 equipment table lists every engine, its rating and its controls; the Permit Review Report explains DEQ's reasoning and responds to comments [P109][RR109].
• The cap. The Plant Site Emission Limit (PSEL) is the annual ceiling. Each of the three Read permits sets NOx at the generic 39 tons a year for non-emergency running, with a fuel cap that keeps the combined emergency-plus-testing potential at 99 tons, one ton under the threshold that would make the source major [P04][P109][P170]. DEQ does not regulate emissions during a declared emergency; the cap covers testing, maintenance and commissioning.
• Cleaner Air Oregon. New sources since November 2018 go through a health-risk assessment before the permit issues; where risk approaches an action level, source risk limits (fuel caps, toxics limits) are written into the permit. PDX109 and PDX170 each carried a Level 3 assessment [RR109][RR170]; PDX04 was called in during June 2024 and its assessment approved 2025-12-17 [CAO04].
• Public comment. DEQ posts a proposed permit for comment before issuing it: five weeks in the two notices read (2021-07-09 to 2021-08-13 for PDX109; 2024-08-16 to 2024-09-20 for PDX170), one comment received on the first, none on the second [RR109][RR170]. Current notices are on Your DEQ Online [YDO].
• The committee. Governor Kotek established the Data Center Advisory Committee in January 2026. Seven members, seven public meetings, 127 presenters, more than 700 written comments. Its September 2026 document is a set of learnings and questions, not recommendations; comment is open until 2026-10-24 and recommendations are due by December 2026 [DC].

Table A — permitted sources on DEQ's older search (21)

Operators are as named on the DEQ record. Design, LLC and Vitesse, LLC are widely reported to be Google and Meta respectively; that is context, not a DEQ figure, and the rows do not say so. Addresses are as listed on the portal.

Table B — leads, not rows (6)

Coverage and limits

• Sources were found by searching DEQ's older Air Quality Permits Online by operator name and city for the five counties where data centers are known to cluster (Morrow, Umatilla, Crook, Wasco, Washington) [LS]. A source permitted under a name we did not search, or in another county, would be missed. Tell us.
• The older portal stops at 2024-11-20. Your DEQ Online has not been searched; every lead in Table B ends there.
• The three Read permits were read page by page from DEQ's PDFs; the quoted figures and page references are in the working research. Pages of boilerplate conditions were not read and are named in the research.
• Megawatts: calculated as counts × stated kW from each permit's equipment table. For PDX04 the figure is the "when completed" total of 96 units as of 2018-04-02; the existing-only figure was 144.7 MW. For PDX109 a consultant document hosted by DEQ gives "approximately 266 MW", consistent with our 265.5 [BAER].
• No individual is named on this page.

Request the full research

Dispute a grade

Sources

• [DC]Oregon Data Center Advisory Committee, Preliminary Learnings and Questions Document, September 2026 (released 2026-09-10) — pulled 2026-09-17
• [LS]Oregon DEQ Air Quality Permits Online (the older search; documents dated before 2024-11-20), stamped "Data Current as of: 9/16/2026" — pulled 2026-09-14 and 2026-09-17
• [YDO]Your DEQ Online (permits, modifications and notices from 2024-11-20 on; searched by hand) — pulled probed 2026-09-14
• [P04]Standard ACDP 25-0008-ST-01 (PDX04), issued 2018-12-03, 16 pp. — pulled 2026-09-15
• [RR04]Permit Review Report, 25-0008-ST-01, 16 pp. — pulled 2026-09-15
• [PM04]Addendum No. 1, 25-0008-ST-01 (name change, 2019) — pulled 2026-09-15
• [AR04]2023 Annual Report, 25-0008-ST-01 — pulled 2026-09-15
• [CAO04]DEQ Cleaner Air Oregon facility page, Amazon PDX 4 — pulled 2026-09-15
• [P109]Standard ACDP 25-0062-ST-01 (PDX109), issued 2021-08-27, 26 pp. (pp. 1–12 and 22–23 read) — pulled 2026-09-17
• [RR109]Permit Review Report, 25-0062-ST-01, 21 pp. — pulled 2026-09-17
• [AR109]Annual Reports 2021, 2022 and 2023, 25-0062-ST-01 (link is the 2023 report; the 2021 and 2022 reports sit at the same path with _AR_2021 and _AR_2022) — pulled 2026-09-17
• [BAER]"Best Available Emissions Reduction Assessment", Maul Foster & Alongi for Amazon, 2023-03-24, hosted by DEQ. A consultant document, used only to cross-check the calculated megawatt total — pulled 2026-09-17
• [P170]Standard ACDP 25-0067-ST-01 (PDX170), issued 2024-09-23, 34 pp. — pulled 2026-09-16
• [RR170]Permit Review Report, 25-0067-ST-01, 24 pp. — pulled 2026-09-16, re-verified 2026-09-17
• [T4]DEQ streamlined data-center permit page (Tier 4 backup generators) — pulled 2026-09-14
• [OPB]OPB, 2026-07-22, on data centers and air quality in the Lower Umatilla Basin. Press; a lead, not a cited figure — pulled 2026-09-14
• [EO]East Oregonian, 2025-03-27, on DEQ's comment period for a PDX109 modification. Press; a lead — pulled 2026-09-15
• [AVN]Apple Valley News Now, 2025-09-30, on a DEQ penalty. Press; a lead — pulled 2026-09-17