The Thirstiest of Us All: Data Centers and the Impact of Their Unsustainable Water Use

by Alyse Coakley*, December 4, 2025

Data Centers and the Mississippi

Data centers threaten to dominate land and water resources across the United States, and the world, as the demand for AI (artificial intelligence) continues to skyrocket. Major tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Meta all continue to build massive warehouses of internet servers that cost billions of dollars. Data centers consume massive amounts of energy—10 to 50 times the amount of a typical commercial office building—and the large-scale centers use the same amount of water in a year as 12,000 to 60,000 people.

The Mississippi River Corridor has become a hotspot of data centers in all 10 of its constituent states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The Mississippi River is an extremely important national waterway because it supports significant portions of the nation’s agriculture, economy, and industries. The river is also home to critical wetland and aquatic habitats. And maybe most importantly, the Mississippi provides drinking water to millions of people in the United States. Seemingly attracted to the vast source of water provided by the Mississippi River Basin, tech companies have flocked to the region. Data centers, like many fields of corn, love to guzzle up water, but how much water is too much?

Data Centers’ Water Usage

Large, or “hyperscale” data centers, like those popping up along the Mississippi, can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day, or about 1.8 billion gallons per year. However, this does not account for indirect water demand, including energy production. Water usage is dependent on environmental factors like location, climate, size of the facility, and proximity to water sources. With some of the biggest facilities in the world being sited near the Mississippi River, published estimates of water use don’t appear to include any of the expanded power production needed.

But what do data centers use the water for? Well, they require water in a multitude of ways. The power plants that provide energy to power data centers require water for their construction, component parts, and operation. Additionally, water is required in the manufacturing of processor chips and the building of internet servers. Operating this technology produces large amounts of heat, so the facilities must utilize vast amounts of water for cooling. The cooling process is critical to prevent overheating or damage to equipment that could result in loss of data or even fires. There are two options for cooling: using water for evaporative cooling or “closed-loop” systems that use less on water but require more energy for cooling. Air conditioning is more expensive and emits more greenhouse gases, so tech companies prefer evaporative cooling. However, the main and obvious drawback of evaporative cooling as the dominant cooling method is that it can consume millions of gallons of water every day, taking it from the water source and releasing it into the atmosphere as steam.

To compound the problem, most data centers do not report their water consumption (and are often not required to under state law), resulting in a lack of transparency and proper accountability. There is an established metric to monitor water consumption—water usage effectiveness (WUE)—but it only applies to on-site usage and not to indirect consumption, failing to provide an accurate picture of the full usage amount. Indirect water consumption usually occurs with electricity generation and is also a massive issue. The 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report estimates that the indirect water footprint of data centers was roughly 800 billion liters of water in 2023. This number is projected to increase over time. 

Where Is All This Water Coming From?

Data centers rely on several types of water sources, including both surface water and groundwater, often via a local water utility. Direct access to surface water includes bodies of water like rivers and lakes, so it makes sense that tech companies like to build their facilities along the Mississippi River. Groundwater is accessed through on-site wells that tap into underground aquifers, such as the Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer that provides almost 400 million gallons of water per day to the state of Louisiana. Municipal water supplies also come from surface or groundwater sources, so data centers often draw water from the same sources as local communities. Increasingly, tech companies are introducing sustainability goals to recycle water. For example, wastewater can be converted into purified reclaimed water and used for cooling. However, how well these goals are being met is unclear.  

The Impacts on Communities and the Environment

Data centers are often built in areas that may be cheap to develop and have low-cost utilities, but these areas are also often scarce in water resources. Communities already experiencing water-stress communities may unwillingly have to fight for water with large, billion-dollar data centers, and the fight is often not between equal parties. Tech companies often receive priority treatment for water usage over local communities. They can then drain water resources from local communities, causing water deficits, rationing, and an increase in water rates as the utility has to scale up operations to accommodate the thirsty evaporation cooling process. The city of Joliet, Illinois, has historically received its water from an aquifer, but recent industrial developments and the construction of data centers in the Chicago region have depleted that water source to the point where it will be gone by 2030. Communities are often not adequately informed about how they would be affected by tech developments in their neighborhoods. In many places, groundwater use is not subject to regulatory oversight sufficient to protect local communities from the unsustainable water usage of data centers or even inform them of the potential danger.

Water shortages affect more than just humans, too. The Mississippi River ecosystem is home to hundreds of species of fish and wildlife, some of which are threatened. The rapid growth of data centers in Mississippi River Corridor states could have far reaching impacts on wildlife that warrant increased attention.

How Is This Problem Solved?

Water scarcity is increasingly becoming an issue in the United States and the Mississippi River Basin, and hyperscale data centers are only worsening the problem by using tremendous amounts of natural resources. Tech companies and data center operators have started to recognize their negative impacts on their surrounding environments and are in the process of developing solutions. In the meantime, state and local officials must consider implementing policies to increase transparency around data center projects and ensure new developments do not create water and resource conflicts with communities, ecosystems, and businesses that already rely on the system’s land and waters.

Though efforts by the Virginia legislature to require more detailed site assessments with water reporting have fallen short, there is growing recognition of the threats posed by the lack of water and energy oversight. Local governments can still act and protect communities in the absence of state action. York County, Virginia, has enacted new standards for data centers to better assess if local resources’ capabilities can adequately meet the high energy and water demands of data centers. Loudoun County, Virginia, has amended the data center approval process by requiring approval from the county board.

The rapid growth of data centers presents a significant and unprecedented threat to the Mississippi River watershed, one of the most important water resources in the U.S. The current water usage by data centers is unsustainable, stealing water from communities and ecosystems. This crisis requires transparency by tech companies, comprehensive water reporting, and stricter local and state policies to protect the future of the Mississippi River.

*Alyse Coakley is graduating from Tulane University in May 2026 with a Bachelor's degree majoring in Environmental Biology with a Strategy, Leadership, and Analytics minor. She was a policy research assistant at the Institute over the summer of 2025.