Think globally, worry locally
While there is no risk that large technology companies will literally drain the ocean to power the data centers behind LLM, even a moderately sized data center can have a significant impact on nearby water resources. For example, the New York Times reported last year that a single Meta data center in Newton County, Georgia, currently uses about 10 percent of the county’s entire water supply. Additionally, the Potomac River Basin Interstate Commission recently estimated that data centers account for 8% of the region’s total water consumption, which could rise to 29% by 2050 if Northern Virginia’s large concentration of data centers continues to grow.
Such intensive water use can put a severe strain on local infrastructure and water supplies, resulting in at least one situation where data centers siphoned millions of gallons from local water sources without first paying. Local impacts can be particularly severe in areas already under water stress. According to a 2025 Business Insider report, 40% of planned and existing data centers in the United States are located in areas with “high” or “very high” water scarcity, as measured by the World Resources Institute.
Given these concerns, big technology companies are keen to project an image of efficiency and responsible stewardship of water supplies. Amazon says it is increasing the operating temperatures of its data centers to reduce the amount of water used for cooling, which results in it using less water per kilowatt-hour than other large data center providers. Amazon also says it is funding “50 water projects expected to restore more than 5.8 billion gallons of water per year for community use,” and Google says it plans 165 water management projects “expected to replenish more than 19 billion gallons of water per year by 2030.”
If all the memes and concerns about data center water consumption are helping to promote this kind of environmental responsibility among PR-focused big tech companies, then that’s all to the good. But if a concerned friend starts to worry that AI data centers are literally causing a global water disaster, a look at the numbers involved will hopefully put those worries to rest.
