Morrow County, Oregon

County ranked by announced AI data-center load

Undisclosed Announced AI load

Campuses

Lead operator

AWS

Resi rate Δ (Umatilla Electric Cooperative)

+8.3%

Home price Δ (3y)

n/a

Property tax Δ (3y)

+7.1%

Population (2024 ACS)

12K

Median HH income (2024 ACS)

$75,448

Key takeaways

Morrow County has 12,249 residents, the smallest population of any batch-3 county, and only 9.8% of residents over 25 hold a bachelor's degree. The county is 73.5% Hispanic or Latino in Boardman, the largest town at 3,828 residents.Source: Census ACS 2023 B01003, B15003 (Morrow County, OR) + sources[0] (Wikipedia: Boardman, OR)
Umatilla Electric Cooperative residential rates rose 8.3% from 2021 to 2023, modest in absolute percentage but applied to a small base. The cooperative has only 12,620 residential customers across both Morrow and Umatilla counties to absorb AWS's announced 16-building Boardman expansion.Source: data/cache/utility_rate_yoy.csv (Umatilla Electric Coop Assn, OR)
Portland General Electric's Boardman coal plant shut down in October 2020, the last coal-fired plant in Oregon, and was demolished in 2022. AWS's data center campus inherited the regional grid headroom that closure created.Source: sources[0] (Wikipedia: Boardman, OR)
Property tax assessments rose 7.1% over three years and home-price data is unavailable for the county. AWS's $4.8 billion 16-building expansion is the explicit driver of any future assessed-value rise, with the existing Boardman and Morrow Expansion sites already operational.Source: data/cache/property_tax_yoy.csv (FIPS 41049) + data/sites/data_centers.csv (Boardman, Morrow County Expansion)

Morrow County is 41.2% Hispanic countywide, the most Hispanic-majority population of any AI county in the country outside Texas. AWS's Boardman footprint sits inside the Columbia Basin irrigation belt that has employed Mexican-American agricultural labor for four generations.Source: Census ACS 2023 B03003 (Morrow County, OR)
Median gross rent in Morrow County is $910 and 70.9% of housing is owner-occupied. The 16-building AWS expansion is therefore landing on a stable owner-resident base, with limited rental inventory for the construction labor surge that 12,249 residents cannot absorb internally.Source: Census ACS 2023 B25064 and B25003 (Morrow County, OR)
Only 87.3% of Morrow households have wired broadband, despite Umatilla Electric Cooperative serving the largest AI campus in Eastern Oregon. The cooperative's fiber buildout for AWS has not yet flowed to residential customers in Boardman, Heppner, and Irrigon.Source: Census ACS 2023 B28002 (Morrow County, OR)
Manufacturing employs 15.5% of Morrow's workforce (829 jobs), most of it food processing at Lamb Weston and Tillamook. The AWS data center is the first non-agricultural industrial employer in the county not tied to the Bonneville hydro export economy.Source: Census ACS 2023 C24050 (Morrow County, OR)