Google Fort Wayne data center, Fort Wayne, Indiana

Indiana regulators on September 10, 2026, approved another request to fill wetlands for Google's $2 billion data center campus in Fort Wayne, Allen County, clearing the way for three more buildings in its third phase. The campus, in southeast Allen County on Adams Center Road, broke ground in April 2024 and is expected to grow to 12 buildings. The permit lets Hatchworks LLC, the campus developer, fill 2.13 acres of forested, isolated wetlands, with work expected to start by mid-September and run to December 2030.

The project was known as Project Zodiac until Google revealed itself as the company behind it, and its investment has grown from "at least $845 million" to "at least $2 billion." The city granted Google a 10-year, 50 percent tax abatement. For the second phase, Google sought to fill about 2.47 acres of wetlands, bringing the total for the six buildings of the first two phases to 8.54 acres, and proposed buying mitigation credits in Eel River Township on the county's northwestern edge rather than near the site. In April 2026 the Indiana Department of Environmental Management also approved plans to add more than 140 emergency diesel generators to the campus after public pushback.

Wetland losses are the heart of the local fight. "When you just take a quarter acre here and a quarter acre there, over and over again, it adds up," said Bruce Kingsbury, director of Purdue Fort Wayne's Environmental Resources Center, who says credits bought elsewhere do not help downstream neighbors who face more flooding. At IDEM's online hearing on the third phase in August, resident Linda Hathaway said: "Once wetlands are destroyed, you're not gonna get them back ... Buying a credit, trying to fix them somewhere else, it's not ever gonna be the same." Many commenters also worried about water contamination and how much water the campus will use, but IDEM said water withdrawal, supply, use and treatment are outside its authority in a wetlands permit. City Councilman Geoff Paddock asked IDEM to apply the "strictest possible environmental and permit review standards" and said the developers had not disclosed plans to take over wetlands when the council approved the project's rezoning.

Hatchworks will buy 4.26 acres of credits from the Openings Mitigation Bank in Fort Wayne, must show proof of purchase within a year, and may not clear trees from April through September to protect the endangered Indiana bat and the threatened northern long-eared bat. IDEM said drone photos it requested confirmed the wetlands had not been disturbed before approval.

The Fort Wayne City Council is weighing a one-year moratorium on approving new data centers, proposed by Councilwoman Rohli Booker, that would have the city's Department of Planning Services write development standards covering zoning, approvals, environmental concerns and safety; it would not affect the Google campus already under construction. The council put a three-week delay on the vote on September 23 after a lengthy debate over amendments, and the matter is due back before the council in mid-October 2026.

Further expansion of the campus itself depends on state wetland and generator permits from IDEM, which has approved every request so far, and on Hatchworks carrying out the mitigation plan in its application.