We Calculated How Much Water Data Centers Actually Use. The Total Will Shock You.

Our Take

Credit to More Perfect Union for doing the math Big Tech won't: the on-site water number in a press release is not the real number. Cooling towers evaporate water directly, sure, but the electricity behind that facility is often generated by power plants that guzzle water too, and the concrete and chip fabrication upstream aren't free either. When you add the indirect draw, you get something like the true footprint — and in the arid West, that footprint is landing on the same aquifers and rivers that farmers and small towns already fight over every summer.

This is the part of the AI boom that never makes it into the ribbon-cutting press release: who signed the water rights deal, what the utility rate case actually says about who subsidizes whose bill, and whether anyone at the county level asked what happens to the water table in a multi-year drought. Local officials are approving these deals fast, often before residents know a facility is even proposed, and the tradeoffs — higher water rates, tighter agricultural allocations, degraded aquifers — get discovered years later.

If you want to see whether one of these facilities is already sited near you, check our facility map, and if you want to push back on a permit or water deal before it's finalized, our take-action page has the tools to start.