Data centers consumed 17 billion gallons of water last year — your town is losing
The short version: A quick on-site video from The Digital Nomad Guy puts a number on data centers' water habit — and the trendline should worry any town sitting next to a new campus.
Our Take
Credit to The Digital Nomad Guy for standing in front of the thing instead of just citing a report — 17.4 billion gallons of water pulled by U.S. data centers last year is easier to feel when you're looking at the building doing the pulling. The projection to 73 billion gallons by 2028 is the part that should stop local officials mid-signature. That's not organic growth, that's a fleet of new campuses already in permitting right now, in places that are not exactly flush with extra water.
The line that matters most here isn't the total, it's the comparison: 40 million Americans already dealing with water insecurity, and drought-stricken states still approving campuses that need millions of gallons a day to keep servers cool. Cooling water isn't optional or deferrable the way a lot of industrial water use is — it runs constantly, and it competes directly with drinking water, agriculture, and everything else a community depends on. When a state or county signs the deal, they're picking a side in that competition, usually quietly, usually without the water math shown to residents up front.
If you want to know whether one of these campuses is sitting on your watershed, check our facility map before the permitting is finished, not after. And if your town is in the pipeline, our take-action page has the questions worth putting to your local board before they sign off on the next one.
This is GridWatch the USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Digital Nomad Guy, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.