Grant County data centers used 37% of their local utility’s average load in 2025, while state data show the county’s 10 largest taxpayers’ assessed value rose between 2006 and 2025.
The Washington Department of Revenue (DOR) workgroup reported that the 10 taxpayers’ combined assessed value rose from $313 million in 2006 to $6.14 billion in 2025. Their combined tax payments increased from $4.25 million to $54.27 million. Seven of the taxpayers were data centers in 2025, six of them in Quincy; the figures cover the full group, not Microsoft alone.
Grant County Public Utility District (Grant PUD) says low-cost utility services and land helped attract data centers, alongside support from local economic development groups, port districts and city governments. The county’s eight data center operators used about 280 average megawatts (aMW) in 2025, compared with Grant PUD’s roughly 757 aMW average system load.
DOR’s findings put Quincy’s property-tax levy rate at $3.12 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2006 and $0.87788 in 2025. The workgroup lists city investments in schools, a hospital, a fire station and water and wastewater systems. It also notes that voters approved some projects, including a bond for a new high school.
Quincy Mayor Paul Worley told CBS News that Microsoft’s presence created “a kind of boom.” He said added tax revenue helped support a high school, a hospital and improvements to other public services. CBS News also reported that Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company would not do anything to raise neighbors’ electricity rates and would replenish more water than it uses.
Microsoft says it contributed tens of millions of dollars toward Quincy’s water reuse center, which opened June 30, 2021. The company described the center’s planned role as routing cooling water for reuse by local industries, including data centers. Quincy School District says Microsoft, Big Bend Community College and other partners helped establish a technician-training program for data center work; 13 students joined its first class in fall 2022.
Grant PUD reports that residential rates rose from 4.12 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2006 to 6.4 cents in 2026. The utility’s figures do not establish how much of that increase was caused by data center demand.
Grant PUD’s schedule calls for service to begin in late 2029 on a 32-mile transmission line connecting Wanapum and Mountain View.
