A closed sale in The Dalles last December carried a median price of $345,000, down more than 9 percent from the year before. By midsummer 2026, Zillow's tracked average had climbed back to $396,291. As of late summer 2026, Movoto's active listings were asking closer to $420,000. Three portals, three numbers, all technically true, all measuring something slightly different.
None of them mention the water bill.
That's the part worth sitting with if you're comparing The Dalles to Hood River, White Salmon, or anywhere else in the Gorge on affordability alone. The purchase price is the number everyone quotes. The number that will actually shape what it costs to live in this house in ten years is sitting in a planning document most buyers never open, and it is heading in a direction the sale price isn't.
What the Median Price Actually Tells You
The Dalles remains one of the more accessible entry points into Gorge homeownership, and that's real. A three-bedroom, two-bath home in the 1,200 to 1,600 square foot range still clears at prices that would be difficult to find in Hood River proper. Homes in older neighborhoods like Dry Hollow often carry more square footage per dollar than newer builds elsewhere in the region, and inventory in pockets like Chenoweth East can run well below the citywide median.
That's the story most guides stop at. It's accurate. It's also incomplete, because the monthly cost of owning a home here is not just the mortgage payment. Every homeowner in The Dalles is also a water customer, and the water utility is in the middle of what city officials themselves have called a generational rebuild.
The Bill Nobody Puts in a Closing Estimate
In May 2026, the Dalles City Council adopted an updated Water Management and Conservation Plan, the state-required document that lays out how the city intends to secure and manage water through 2035. It followed a Water Master Plan approved the previous December. Together they describe a utility system facing roughly $259 million in projects over the next 20 years, with another $151 million identified beyond that horizon.
The average residential water bill in The Dalles today runs around $55 a month. Under the adopted plan, that figure is projected to climb past $150 a month over the next two decades, close to triple where it sits now.
Some of what that money buys is straightforward maintenance any city would eventually need. The Wicks Water Treatment Plant, which draws from Mill Creek south of town, is 75 years old and due for replacement. Garrison Reservoir needs roughly $3.4 million in rehabilitation. The plant's SCADA system, the computerized network that monitors pumps and valves across the system, needs about $2 million in modernization.
But the plan is explicit that Wicks isn't just being replaced. It's being expanded, and the stated reason is to increase water production for projected industrial demand, primarily from Google's data center campus on the city's western edge.
That's the tension city officials have had to answer publicly. If future demand is coming mostly from industrial growth, why are residential ratepayers absorbing rate increases sized for that growth?
Mayor Richard Mays addressed the trust problem directly at a public meeting in March 2026, referencing the city's 2021 decision to sue The Oregonian rather than release records of Google's water use before a council vote on the company's deal. He said the earlier secrecy "is coming back to haunt us today," acknowledging the skepticism residents now bring to every water conversation involving Google.
Whose Growth Is Actually Driving This
The city's own planning numbers back up the mayor's point. Residential water demand in The Dalles is projected to grow by about 45 percent over the next 50 years as the population expands modestly. Nonresidential demand, driven overwhelmingly by data centers, is projected to grow by roughly 200 percent over that same window.
Google's own numbers illustrate why. Records released after that 2021 lawsuit showed the company's water use nearly tripled between 2017 and 2021, reaching 355 million gallons that year, before dipping to 305 million gallons in 2023. By 2025, usage had climbed to about 550 million gallons, and the city's projections have that figure tripling again in the years ahead. Google pays for water like any commercial account. If usage reaches 1.4 billion gallons a year, the company's annual water bill alone could top $1 million.
Here's what that looks like side by side, using the numbers each source actually reported:
| Today (2025-26) | Projected (roughly 2044-46) | |
|---|---|---|
| Average residential water bill | About $55/month | More than $150/month |
| City water infrastructure spend | Baseline maintenance | $259M over 20 years, plus $151M beyond |
| Nonresidential (mostly industrial) demand growth | Baseline | Up roughly 200% over 50 years |
| Residential demand growth | Baseline | Up roughly 45% over 50 years |
The gap between those last two rows is the whole story. A single large industrial customer is driving most of the future demand curve, and the rate structure that pays for meeting that demand runs through everyone's monthly bill, not just the customer causing it.
The Other Side of the Ledger: What Google Actually Pays
It would be unfair to leave out the other half of this arrangement, because it isn't a one-way transfer. Google operates in The Dalles under Strategic Investment Program and Enterprise Zone agreements that discount its property taxes by roughly 92 percent. In 2025, the company paid $7.3 million in property taxes, including a community service fee, on that reduced basis.
A second, newer data center building generated about $9.8 million in taxes and fees in its first year of operation, well above what officials had projected when the tax agreement was negotiated in 2021. Combined across its entities, including one that files as Design LLC, Google paid nearly $13 million in taxes and fees to Wasco County in 2025, making it the county's largest taxpayer even with the abatement in place.
A portion of that money flows through what's called a Guaranteed Annual Payment, which generated about $5.75 million in 2025, split evenly between the city and county. From there it's distributed to local taxing districts, with North Wasco County School District 21 receiving the largest share, followed by the county itself, the city, and Mid-Columbia Fire & Rescue, with smaller amounts reaching the library district, parks department, and Columbia Gorge Community College.
Google's arrival in 2006 wasn't incidental to any of this. The company built its first Oregon data center after Lockheed Martin closed its aluminum smelter and the town needed a new economic anchor. The newer buildings sit on a separate parcel, a former Northwest Aluminum property Google acquired in 2016 and held for several years before breaking ground. Two decades after that first arrival, Google employs about 200 people locally, a modest headcount for a company that has become the largest single revenue source in the county's tax base.
The Reservoir Fight That Isn't Settled Yet
One more piece is still in motion. Representative Cliff Bentz has introduced a bill in Congress to transfer about 150 acres of U.S. Forest Service land near a reservoir roughly 13 miles northeast of Mount Hood to the City of The Dalles, which wants to expand its storage capacity. Water from that reservoir flows through South Mill Creek toward the Wicks Treatment Plant. As of the most recent reporting, the bill had passed the House and was sitting in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, with no final vote yet scheduled.
City officials maintain the century-old water rights at stake predate any conversation with Google and that the reservoir serves the whole community's water system, not one private customer's demand. Local environmental advocates remain skeptical, given how closely the timeline tracks the data center expansion. Either way, the outcome will shape how much of that $259 million plan gets built as designed, and how fast rates climb to pay for it.
What This Means If You're Comparing The Dalles to Hood River or White Salmon
None of this makes The Dalles a bad place to buy. It makes it a place where the true cost of ownership requires one more line item than the listing sheet provides. If you're weighing a lower purchase price here against a higher one in Hood River or White Salmon, it's worth asking your lender or agent to model utility costs over a 10 to 15 year hold, not just the current monthly rate. It's worth asking whether a specific property is on city water or served by Chenowith Water PUD, since rate structures differ. And it's worth understanding that the infrastructure spending already approved by the council is not speculative. It's adopted policy, which means the rate trajectory is close to a known quantity even if the exact annual increases haven't all been set yet.
The Dalles earned its reputation as the affordable entry point into Gorge living honestly. That reputation is still true today. It just comes with a second number now, one that lives in a water bill instead of a closing statement, and it's the one worth asking about before you sign anything.
If you're weighing a specific address in The Dalles against something in Hood River or across the river in White Salmon, Julie Gilbert can walk through the real numbers with you, purchase price, property taxes, and the utility trajectory together, so you know what you're actually signing up for before you write an offer.
