This is one outlet's own report from Gizmodo — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
Just How Bad Are AI Data Centers for Your Local Water?
The proliferation of AI data centers has spurred protests across the United States. Last month, communities that had long fought separate battles against Big Tech's intrusion into their hometowns organized for the first coordinated national demonstration, staging nearly 150 protests across 42 states.
Among their chief concerns is the amount of water these facilities consume to cool servers. Some communities are already feeling the impact. In Fayetteville, Georgia, a Quality Technology Services data center campus quietly sucked 30 million gallons (113 million liters) from the local water supply before ever receiving a utility bill, though QTS denied any improper use. In The Dalles, Oregon, Google's data centers were responsible for nearly 40% of the city's total water consumption in 2025, guzzling about 550 million gallons.
But there's another side of this story, one in which some tech industry leaders, analysts, and engineers argue that the issue is overblown. They question the math behind eyebrow-raising usage statistics, praise the efficiency of closed-loop systems, and point to other water-intensive industries that have not triggered national panic.
So, where does the truth lie? For this Giz Asks, we asked experts how much AI data centers actually impact local water systems. The answer is as complicated as you might imagine.
The following responses may have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
A professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside. Ren's research broadly focuses on AI, systems, and society.
Water can play an important role in improving the energy efficiency of data centers. Many facilities use evaporative or adiabatic cooling, particularly during the hottest hours of the year. These systems consume water, but they can require substantially less electricity for cooling than fully air-cooled systems under hot conditions.
This creates a real power-water tradeoff. During a heatwave, when electricity demand from homes and businesses may already be placing pressure on the grid, water-assisted cooling can help limit increases in a data center's power demand. In regions where electricity generation is itself water-intensive, lower electricity consumption may also reduce some indirect water use. The net effect, however, depends on the local power mix, cooling system, climate, and water source.
At the same time, the local water impacts can be significant. Data centers are large and concentrated users, and their highest water demand may occur on hot days when other users also need more water. Annual consumption figures alone, therefore, do not provide a complete picture. A facility with relatively modest annual water use could still create infrastructure or reliability concerns if its peak demand exceeds the available treatment, storage, or distribution capacity of the local water system.
Location and water source are also critical. A facility using reclaimed or other non-potable water in a water-abundant region presents a different level of risk from one relying on potable water in a drought-prone community with limited infrastructure or supply.
These challenges can be effectively addressed through careful planning and operation. Options include using reclaimed or non-potable water, installing on-site storage, switching between water-saving and energy-saving cooling modes, shifting flexible computing workloads during periods of local stress, and coordinating with both water utilities and electric-grid operators.
The objective should not necessarily be to eliminate on-site water use in every case. It should be to evaluate the full local context and use water strategically and transparently, balancing energy efficiency, operational resilience, environmental impacts, and the needs of surrounding communities.
Associate dean for undergraduate studies and community outreach in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering at Florida Atlantic University. Bloetscher's research interests include sustainable water resource planning and management.
The answer to this question is: it depends. It depends on how much water you have available, how much power you have available, how much land you have available, and the type of data center. We have traditionally thought about the data centers that someone like Amazon runs locally. Which are called “traditional data centers.” There are over 4,000 of them in the United States. They have a power demand between 10 and 30 kilowatts and use a combination of standard air conditioning system cooling, air cooling, and evaporative water cooling. Water cooling is more efficient than air cooling by a significant margin (25% or more). Most communities can handle data centers of this size.
In addition to additional traditional data centers, what is being proposed are AI hyperscale data centers—approximately 84 of those across the United States. These are a far different animal, using up to 1 megawatt of power (100 times traditional data centers) and consuming up to 5,000,000 gallons of water per day. Air cooling doesn't work very well at this scale. These AI hyperscale data center campuses could be hundreds of acres—the Meta Hyperion proposal in Los Angeles is over 2,000 acres.
In many developed areas, this amount of land and power may not be readily available. While recycling water for cooling is practical, the power component still needs a cooling system, and water is the typical means to do it. For reference, 1 MW is a large power plant by itself, so fuel is also a concern.
The next challenge is that the AI users are in urban areas, while the land is not. Likewise, power is locally generated or moved through the grid, which has some inherent losses. The power grid is most robust in urban areas where the users are but is not where the land may be.
So the conflict is that the AI data centers are much larger than the current data centers, prefer to be located in urban areas...
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.
