US datacenters tripled their water footprint in 10 years

Datacenters in America used about 17 billion gallons of water during 2023, triple the amount they used a decade earlier in 2014, according to an estimate from US Congressional Research Service (CRS). In a recent report published by the Library of Congress, the CRS casts an eye over how server farms use water, looks at potential …

[blot-on-the-landscape]

near memory compute coming

it's no life saver but also not sure how far they are off this and the relentless funding and construction of data centres are unlikely to stop while investment continues, either in memory or near memory compute is supposed to help.

It's not a complete solution, and it is unclear how far the technology is from widespread adoption. . However, in-memory or near-memory computing could potentially reduce water consumption by roughly 20–70% in suitable workloads, although these are approximate and no-one is sure by how much

[Marty McFly]

For context...

The Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest discharges an average of 171 billion gallons of water per day. So less than 2 1/2 hours of flow for all US data centers over one year.

The Mississippi river discharges over 414 billion gallons average per day. That is 59 minutes of flow for all US data centers over one year.

Let's look another way... 17 billion gallons of rain is the equivalent of 4 inches of rain over 244 square miles (ie: a square about 16 miles x 16 miles). According to the USGS, the average rainfall for ALL the contiguous United States is 30 inches. 17 billion gallons is the total annual rainfall on 33 square miles - roughly 6 miles x 6 miles.

Chicago, for example, has an area of around 227 square miles. Around 60% of the surface area is impervious (ie: roofs, streets, parking lots, etc). With around 150 billion gallons of rain annual in Chicago, that means 90 billion gallons annually has to be mitigated as run-off in to sewer systems, etc.

During the early July 2026 storms in the area, Chicago's Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP) successfully managed more rain water than is consumed by all US data centers in a single year. One storm, one metro area.

Should we be cognizant of data center water consumption? Sure. Should we run around in panic & protest? I don't think so.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: For context...

Panic? No. Protest? Yes. A hyperscale "AI" data center can have the equivalent water requirements of a town of 30k-50k.Since those kinds of data centers are built where the land is cheap and plentiful, 67% of of new builds are being planned in rural areas where they will consume a high proportion of local resources, driving up local prices and providing giving nothing back to the community.

[Like a badger]

Re: For context...

But it's all about location. US DC's are heavily clustered in California (severe water stress), Texas (severe water stress), and Virginia (pretty much no water stress).

[nobody who matters]

Re: For context...

And are these data centres using some of those huge river flows direct out of the rivers?

Or are they using treated potable water out of the local supply? (or groundwater via boreholes)

The former isn't necessarily a massive panic making problem.

The latter, is!

[retiredFool]

Re: For context...

What rivers are you talking about? The colorado is completely subscribed. Every drop, well more like 2 drops for every real drop. Lake Meade is expected to hit the deadpool level soon. Now move to Texas. That same name Colorado (different river) is allocated by LCRA and I forget the name for who controls the upper branch of the river. It too has every drop accounted for. Not all that long ago Atlanta was facing a severe drought. And Georgia is pretty wet. So unless the DC's are willing to shut down when there is a water drought, then don't build them. As an example of water allocations, cotton farming in South Texas gets variable amounts based on water availability. It is becoming a thing for farmers to adjust based on how much water they can have. So another question do people want to eat or watch cat videos. Because in many places now, there is not enough water for both.

[NoneSuch]

Re: For context...

"So another question do people want to eat or watch cat videos."

They want to do both, while not recycling and running their car in the drive for an hour to warm it up. When actually driving, they fling fast foot wrappers out the window with black soot coming out of their exhausts from badly maintained vehicles. They want others to change so they can continue to live their largely ignorant lives of consumption.

'Merica!

[Ashentaine]

Re: For context...

Unfortunately your vision of 'Merica is a bit outdated. Thanks to private equity fast food is now too expensive to eat more than once every other week, thanks to overhead chasing automakers and Cash For Clunkers depleting the used market a decade ago there are no affordable cars left to buy, thanks to our stable genius of a president gas is too expensive to waste even if we had something to put it in, and thanks to incompetent city councils recycling programs usually get nerfed into the ground because it's much cheaper to just bulldoze some woodlands and open a new landfill.

But hey, on the plus side... thanks to all the data breaches, every man, woman and child has at least 5 years of free credit monitoring!

[richdin]

Re: For context...

Sorry if I seem dense, but the water either evaporates (and returns as rain) or gets discharged and can be cleaned and used again for agriculture or urban consumption... it is not "lost" forever.

So why not just require the proper recycling? even if it costs a little more. I don't get the "panic".

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: For context...

>So why not just require the proper recycling? even if it costs a little more. I don't get the "panic".

Water is only lost from evaporation systems. You could collect the vapour and condense it but that would take more energy than you are getting from the original cooling system. So you would need another bigger cooling system to cool the first cooling system.

It's like saying we don't need to worry about climate change because we can just carbon capture all the CO2 from a power station and turn it back into coal.

[retiredFool]

Re: For context...

It IS a problem when it evaporates in Texas and rains back in Ohio. Or evaporates in Vegas and rains in Washington. You're assuming it falls back where it came from. It doesn't.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: For context...

So long as American water evaporates and falls as American rain in America.

Then we don't have to pay tariffs on any of the imported clouds

[Marty McFly]

Re: For context...

"US DC's are heavily clustered in California (severe water stress), Texas (severe water stress), and Virginia (pretty much no water stress)"

Let's stack rank by capacity:

Virginia ~17.4 GW statewide

Texas ~7.7 GW statewide

Columbia River OR/WA ~3.1 GW

California ~1.1 GW statewide

Let's also consider CA & TX are vastly larger land areas. Doing the math, Virginia + Columbia River OR/WA has 2.3x more data center capacity per land area compared to the "severe water stress" areas.

My original point remains... Be aware of usage, but no need to panic. The sub-point would be watch out for media sensationalism ("..tripled their water footprint...") and do your own reality check.

[low_resolution_foxxes]

Re: For context...

It seems Virginia has many reasons for datacentre installations being so large. The general quantity of fibre optic being one useful reason

I'm sure it is useful to have a sub 5C degrees climate for 3 months of the year, reducing heating costs compared to say Arizona. When it gets hot apparently in the summer this is when the water consuming evaporative technologies are used to cool water / hardware temperatures

[Arkitekt]

How is this possible? We've been assured over and over again by these conpanies that they are saving water, decreasing their use???

You mean we cant trust the large corporations that are spending untold amounts of money to build something nobody wants or needs to tell us the truth about their impact on the environment?

Im shocked.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Because a decade ago there were very few data centers this big and they are comparing that to all the proposed / planning applied for centers now.

Its like extrapolating world cup matches over the last 4years and showing that next year England will be playing France every day

[coredump]

> we cant trust the large corporations ... to tell us the truth

Apparently, according to TFA, sometimes we can't trust them to tell us anything at all, eh?

"a water service agreement between the municipality and the operator, and these can include provisions that limit the disclosure of this information"

Flip your coin whether you'd rather be lied to or stonewalled behind bureaucracy.

[Andrew Kaluzniacki]

Per grok: 17 billion gallons is a tiny fraction of yearly U.S. water use—roughly 0.014–0.015% of total withdrawals, or about 1.3 hours of national daily usage.

Of course location matters - charge for the water appropriately and it will all work out - thanks to capitol economics.

[Gerhard den Hollander]

Right, let's ask AI how deadly AI's use of water is ...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Instead we believe the golfing politicians elected by farmers - about who wastes water

[low_resolution_foxxes]

May I ask a rather ... silly question. Let's ignore the energy consumption side for now (and associated water use).

How much water does a datacentre actually "consume", or I suppose, how much is boiled off into gasses?

It's a sciency angle. I wasn't aware that datacentre water use gets up to 100C to boil it off. Presumably it gets warm, goes into a holding lake, and either re-used or allowed back into the local water supply

So I am curious to know how much water is "no longer there" for others to use locally?

It feels like this is an intentional misdirection, but why? Are the governments and councils trying to tax it more?

Doing a quick Google, it seems like there are different technologies. Some datacentres use filtered sewage water recycled continuously. While some older datacentres used tower evaporation (to be fair this does sound like it evaporates a moderate amount of water), but modern datacentres use 'closed loop' water cycling schemes that continuously recycle the same water to cool hardware.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your questions are not "silly". They are, however, contrary to the popular narrative.

[nobody who matters]

A body of water doesn't have to reach 100 Celcius for evaporation to take place ;)

Evaporation takes place when the temperature diffference is sufficient to cause it to be lost as a vapour (which is where the word evaporation comes from after all). At over 100 Celcius, it boils and becomes a gas.

This is also a 'sciency' angle ;)