Most New US Data Centers Are Slated for Drought-Plagued Areas
Amid public outcry over water-guzzling server farms, a Guardian analysis indicates trouble ahead.
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
A record-shattering drought has racked much of the United States. But the artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless, with the majority of planned data centers set to be built in drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found.
About two-thirds of upcoming data centers, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year.
Of 809 planned data centers, 517 are in locations that have been in drought conditions throughout the past year, according to data from Cleanview and the federal government, which grades drought across four levels of severity. A similar proportion of existing data centers are already situated in drought-affected areas.
More than 60 percent of the contiguous US is currently at varying stages of drought, the largest expanse for spring in modern records, with a particularly severe lack of rain and snow in the Southeast and West desiccating croplands and raising fears of a disastrous wildfire season.
Scientists have determined that the climate crisis, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is worsening the duration and intensity of droughts in the US.
But a stampede of new data centers are adding extra demands via their hefty energy and water requirements. Large data centers, some the size of small towns, can require up to 5 million gallons of water a day, equivalent to the water use of up to 50,000 people, in order to provide cooling to arrays of humming networked computers.
Overall, the multiplying data centers are set to demand as much as 73 billion gallons of water a year by 2028, up from about 17 billion gallons in 2023. Each 100-word AI prompt uses up roughly a half-liter of water due to the cooling needs of data centers, researchers have estimated.
“The AI industry is sprinting as fast as it can to gain market dominance, and the rest of us have to deal with a great increase in water demand in places already in drought,” said Christopher Dalbom, an expert in water resources law at Tulane University. “Even if there wasn’t climate change, we’d be feeling the effects of droughts more acutely, because water demand is going up and up, to feed more people and water more lawns and crops. There isn’t enough water to go around. Now with this explosion of data centers, I think a crunch point is inevitable.”
Companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are pouring billions of dollars into new data centers, with developers often drawn to dry, sparsely populated areas, due to the lower cost of land and generous tax breaks. Arid climates are also thought to cause the least amount of corrosion to equipment over time.
One of the world’s largest data centers, a complex twice the size of Manhattan, was controversially approved last month in a Utah county that has been deep in drought since summer last year. Meanwhile, Walla Walla county in Washington, site of a planned Amazon data center, has also been overwhelmingly in drought since July of last year.
In Texas, two of the largest new data centers are arriving in counties—Pecos and Carson—recently parched by drought. Data centers could account for 9 percent of Texas’s total water use by 2040, researchers recently calculated, with the state’s water development board forecasting Texas will have to deal with rising overall demand and falling supply of water in the decades ahead.
While an immediate water shortage is unlikely, hard choices will have to be made to avoid future clashes over water access, according to Dalbom. “When we get into a situation where there’s a limited amount of water available, are we going to limit water to residents and businesses before data centers?” he said.
“In the eastern US, we have always assumed an abundance of water, so the legal systems aren’t set up for shortages. We can’t just assume that people aren’t going to be asked to reduce their water use, while data centers and energy won’t be.”
Concerns over water use, as well as rising energy bills, have stirred local opposition to a rash of data center projects, causing some developments to be curtailed or canceled. These concerns have become a political headache for Republicans—Donald Trump has been a vocal supporter of the AI industry—with much of the opposition coming from rural, more conservative areas.
“Ranchers are being told to be conservative with water, to not waste water, and now there’s a new competing interest able to get near unlimited access to water,” said Andrew Coppin, chief executive of Ranchbot, a company that helps ranchers track their water use. “The concerns from farmers are real and justified. Data centers are flavor of the month now, but we wouldn’t make the choice to only be able to have a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. I mean, ChatGPT is a pretty nice tool, but most people would prefer to have a beef steak if they had to choose.”
Data center developers say the industry’s current water use is still just a fraction of what much larger consumers, primarily agriculture, already take, causing growing strain on key sources such as the Colorado River. Even the irrigation of golf courses and lawns sucks up more water than data centers.
