Data centers use vast amounts of water primarily for evaporative cooling, spraying it into the air or over coils to cool hot air generated by servers in order to keep the equipment from failing. The largest data centers can consume between 1 and 5 million gallons of water daily, with consumption rising during the summer.
There are currently 286 data centers in California, and more are on the way. A very large new data center is targeted to be built by 2028 in Imperial, a small city 115 miles east of San Diego. The 950,000-square-foot center could be the largest operating statewide, taking up 17 football fields’ worth of land.
According to a nationwide poll, 54% of respondents are extremely or at least very concerned about the effect data centers will have on water quality, water supply, and costs in their area. More than 90% of data centers in the U.S. get most of the water they need from municipal systems.
Across the country, data centers are driving the need for water infrastructure upgrades, estimated to cost between $10 billion and as much as $58 billion, and while new data centers can take as little as two to three years to build, developing new water sources can take as long as 20 years.
According to a University of California, Riverside study, data centers could collectively require 697 to 1,451 million gallons per day of new water capacity over the next few years. By comparison, New York City uses about 1,000 million gallons of water a day.
