Across the Mountain West, data center construction has been slowed by local opposition, fueled in part by misunderstandings about the water consumption associated with the industry. Articles like “AI Chugs a Bottle of Water Every Time You Chat With It,” and “The Dark Side of Data Centers Part 2: Water Guzzlers” give the impression that data centers are uniquely intense in their water consumption. This phrasing has also shown up in recent legislative bills. Idaho’s recently passed HB 895 claims data centers “require significant amounts of water.” Washington HB 2515 says data centers “are also major users of … water.”
First, states and localities should take steps to ensure that data centers are transparent in their water usage and that it is appropriately aligned with the particular region’s level of water scarcity. That said, concerns over data center water use are often grounded in hyperbolic language that rips water consumption from its particular context
For instance, these objections are front and center as Meta constructs its data center in Kuna, Idaho. Meta acquired the water rights for its center from the farmland on which the center is being built. The rights entitle it to some 3.7 million gallons of water per day, 2.5 million of which it has signed over to the City of Kuna as part of the construction of a water treatment plant that Meta plans to donate to the city.
Its peak water use is estimated to be two million gallons per day in July and August, though this should drop off in the winter months. Two million gallons of water per day sounds like a lot, but the fact of the matter is that even if the data center used two million gallons per day year-round, this is an insignificant number when it comes to the scale of gross water consumption in Idaho.
The USGS’s most recent state-level estimate recorded that Idaho withdrew some 17 billion gallons of water per day in 2015. Crop irrigation, some of it done on land that data companies are now buying for construction, accounted for 86% of this total at 15 billion gallons. If this consumption total has not shifted significantly, the Meta data center would represent just 0.01% of Idaho’s water withdrawals. And in this particular case, any water saved in the transition from agriculture to data centers will go towards the city’s water supply, addressing another major concern common to water transfers.
It should be clear that while data centers are water-intensive, they are not the guzzlers that they are typically portrayed as when compared to things like agricultural use. Not only are these data centers not water guzzlers, the water that they are using often would have been consumed by the farm whose land they purchased. Due to the nature of water rights, data centers will not put new strain on the region’s water supply; rather, they will simply exchange one use for another. This is true in other regions as well, such as Quincy, Washington, a major hub for data centers built on irrigated farmland.
Critics of data centers will respond by noting that data centers use water in ways other than the direct use that I’ve laid out here. A primary concern is that the electricity used to generate power for the data center must also use water unless it relies on a renewable source like solar. It is difficult to know just how much these additions will change each data center’s impact on its local community. Even so, national estimates show that when adding water consumption from chip manufacturing and electricity generation, data centers account for 163 billion gallons of water consumed annually, which is a third of what US golf courses consume annually, and about 1% of what US farms consume annually (given roughly 40% of farm irrigation is returned to the source).
Data centers have the potential to be an economic boon to the regions in which they are built, along with laying the groundwork for advances in medicine, national defense, and other research. Slowing data center development must be done based on local context, including the consumption levels of the data center and regional water availability.
This twofold commitment to advancement and conservation, which has been espoused in Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon’s recent executive order, is the best path forward for a policy approach to data centers in the region.
Luke Hill is an intern for Mountain States Policy Center, an independent research organization based in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Washington. Online at mountainstatespolicy.org.