Not just electricity — water supplies will be taxed by data centers

This article was originally published by Minnesota Reformer.

Americans are becoming well acquainted with data centers’ use of electricity via their utility bills, but the power-hungry warehouses that fuel our insatiable appetite for memes, movies, pics and posts is thirsty for an even more important resource: water. 

One large-scale data center can consume as much water as 12,000 households, according to the the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

“We are going to see more water conflicts as the data center sector expands at the same time as we see an expansion of irrigated agriculture into areas that haven’t needed it as much,” said Helena Volzer, a water policy manager for Alliance for the Great Lakes, in an interview. 

A Minnesota Department of Natural Resources order temporarily barring new or expanded irrigation allowances along Little Rock Creek portends broader conflicts over groundwater use across the Great Lakes region, the Alliance said in a report released Wednesday. 

The DNR’s April 2024 order found “substantial evidence” that agricultural irrigation and other authorized uses harmed the Mississippi River tributary, which runs along the boundary of Benton and Morrison counties in central Minnesota. Elsewhere in the region, proposed mines, factories and data centers threaten to deplete the underground aquifers that supply up to 40% of the Great Lakes’ volume — and drinking water reserves for nearly three-quarters of Minnesotans. 

Climate change, the artificial intelligence race, and pressure to mine and manufacture more on U.S. soil mean “we are seeing a convergence of increasing water demand from different sources,” said Volzer, who spent a year compiling the report. 

Data centers with evaporative cooling systems, in particular, can consume vast amounts of water. Though most of Minnesota lies outside the Great Lakes basin, Volzer said the concerns raised in the report apply to other major watersheds, too.

Minnesota statute allows the DNR to limit groundwater appropriations in designated groundwater management areas. But it can only take that step after determining that groundwater draws hurt nearby surface waters, as it did last year in the Little Rock Creek case, or when “there are competing demands among existing and proposed users which exceed the reasonably available waters,” Volzer said in the report.

That restricts the DNR to act only in situations where actual or proposed water withdrawals clearly impact people and businesses. In her report, Volzer advised Minnesota lawmakers to expand the state’s groundwater protection law to let the DNR intervene when water appropriations are “likely” to impact surface or groundwater reserves.

State legislators passed a series of water protection laws earlier this decade after a Lakeville-based rail company proposed shipping 500 million gallons of Dakota County groundwater each year to the U.S. Southwest, said state Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul. (The DNR shot down that proposal.)

Proactive measures will help states like Minnesota get ahead of a fast-growing IT industry whose environmental impacts remain unclear, Volzer said. 

In her report, Volzer advised states to fund studies of expected water demand and groundwater resources, while expanding water use reporting requirements. That could give state and local authorities more insight into where large IT facilities could be located without unduly stressing aquifers, she told the Reformer.

The ag industry’s political sway could complicate further legislation to manage Minnesota’s groundwater, Hansen said.

“Big Ag makes water law changes hard because some legislators are susceptible to ‘cropaganda,’” he said.

Thirsty data centers have already caused political backlash in Georgia, where residents on private wells near Atlanta say a new Meta facility has rendered their water “undrinkable.” 

Meta is spending $800 million to build another data center in Rosemount, southeast of the Twin Cities. The city says that facility could draw 100,000 gallons of groundwater per day at peak capacity, or one Olympic swimming pool every six days, the Star Tribune reported in April. 

Data centers proposed for Chaska and Farmington could use 15 and 24 times more than Meta’s Rosemount hub, the Strib reported, though Chaska’s water manager assured the paper that the city can handle the added demand.

“We don’t have a good sense of the water footprint of a data center right now,” Volzer said. That’s due to the fact that data center developers require city officials to sign nondisclosure agreements before moving forward, she said, and because data center designs vary widely and continue to evolve. 

Newer designs favor closed-loop or waterless liquid cooling systems that are more economical than evaporative water cooling. The catch, Volzer said, is that those systems may require more electricity to run pumps, fans and heat exchangers, increasing demand on nearby thermal power plants fueled by coal, gas or uranium. 

Those plants themselves need huge amounts of cooling water, setting up a “shell game” where data centers shift water usage beyond their sphere of influence. (Wind turbines and solar panels use little or no water in their operations.)

“There is a nexus between water and energy. You can’t silo them,” Volzer said.