{"id":649354,"date":"2026-05-17T23:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T23:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/649354\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T23:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T23:39:08","slug":"hot-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/649354\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot water"},"content":{"rendered":"

Data center builders don\u2019t tell the public how much water they use, according to a new report<\/a> \u2014 and the industry is encroaching into water-stressed and vulnerable communities.<\/p>\n

The report, by the think tank Next10 and researchers at Santa Clara University, finds that planned data centers \u2014 the ganglia of artificial intelligence \u2014 are spreading<\/a> to regions reliant on overtapped groundwater and strained surface water, with potentially major effects in the Central and Imperial Valleys.<\/p>\n

But, reinforcing previous studies,<\/a> the researchers found that a patchwork of state, federal and local policies allows data center operators to avoid publicly disclosing their actual water use.<\/p>\n

California lawmakers tried to address<\/a> this last year, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure. Now, the legislature is trying again, with bills<\/a> mandating<\/a> disclosures about water use and planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this huge build out, and we have very little data,\u201d said Irina Raicu<\/a>, who directs the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.<\/p>\n

Paired with California\u2019s precarious water supplies, Raicu said, \u201cIt\u2019s just not a good combination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaolei Ren<\/a>, an expert on the environmental impacts of AI at UC Riverside who was not involved in the study, said the findings point to a much broader problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cLimited publicly available information about data center water use makes it difficult for communities, water providers and researchers to have meaningful public discussions and responsibly assess power-water trade-offs,\u201d Ren said in an email.<\/p>\n

Murky water use\u00a0<\/p>\n

Few environmental impact reports for California\u2019s data centers were publicly available online, the researchers found.<\/p>\n

Raicu and co-author Iris Stewart-Frey<\/a>, a professor of environmental science, went looking for the reports, meant to assess and disclose<\/a> a project\u2019s impacts for both nature and people under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act.<\/p>\n

They found almost none. The ones they did find were largely for facilities in the city of Santa Clara.<\/p>\n

Through interviews with planning officials, they discovered that projects can slip through with little environmental review if they fall under certain size or water use thresholds, or if they meet a city or county\u2019s criteria for other approval pathways. These include something called ministerial approval<\/a>, which requires planning agencies to approve a project that meets local zoning and other standards.<\/p>\n

Even for data centers that undergo more stringent environmental scrutiny, the researchers found that documentation is rarely available to the public.<\/p>\n

In the few cases the planning documents were posted publicly, the information \u2014 on the data center\u2019s owner or operator, size, type of cooling system, the amount of water used, whether it\u2019s recycled or potable \u2014 was often \u201cmissing, contradictory, or vague,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

The researchers said they contacted water providers in areas where data centers cluster, seeking usage data. None responded.<\/p>\n

A shift to vulnerable regions<\/p>\n

California\u2019s data centers mostly cluster in the south San Francisco Bay Area and the city of Los Angeles, with smaller concentrations in Sacramento and San Diego.<\/p>\n

But the report noted large, planned projects in rural and less affluent regions \u2014 like in Santa Clara County\u2019s Gilroy, as well as in the heavily agricultural Imperial Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need a bunch of cheap land,\u201d Raicu. \u201cIf we\u2019re not careful, they will end up being pitched, very convincingly, to communities that have real needs \u2014 without enough attention being paid to the water part.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, which has opposed bills mandating more granular water-use reporting, said in an email the industry is \u201ccommitted to being a good neighbor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boender argues that data centers collectively \u201cused significantly less water than other essential industries in 2025, including the agriculture, power, food and beverage, and semiconductor sectors,\u201d but the coalition offers no data to back that up.<\/p>\n

Collective use matters less than local impacts in a state where each community has its own mix of water supplies and strains, according to a previous study published by a team at UC Berkeley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whether data centers use a lot or a little water relative to agriculture or other industries, \u201cwhat matters most is the scale of new local use compared to available local supply,\u201d the Berkeley team concluded earlier this year. \u201cUnfortunately, this picture is clouded by data deficiencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s report, the Santa Clara University team drilled into those local supplies and community vulnerabilities to anticipated expansion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at the brink of this happening in California,\u201d Stewart-Frey, the environmental scientist, said. Her report, she added, isn\u2019t advocating against data centers. But \u201ccommunities should know what they\u2019re getting themselves into.\u201d<\/p>\n

Debates over proposed data centers are erupting in a Kern County desert community<\/a> with dwindling groundwater and in the hot Imperial Valley, which draws from the strained Colorado River<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Monterey Park residents in the San Gabriel Valley successfully opposed<\/a> one data center project over environmental concerns<\/a> and inadequate information and secured an upcoming vote on a citywide ban<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a letter to city officials<\/a>, a representative for the developer dismissed opponents as \u201crage-baiting an uninformed mob to pressure your decisionmaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raicu pushed back. \u201cIf those communities are uninformed about the issue \u2014 whose fault is that? Who should be informing the people so that you don\u2019t have this kind of pushback, if there is no need for it?\u201d<\/p>\n

New laws v. Big Tech<\/p>\n

Last year, Assemblymember Diane Papan<\/a>, a Democrat from San Mateo, authored a bill<\/a> requiring data center operators to report estimated or actual water use to their water supplier when seeking or renewing a business license or permit.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure amid industry pressure<\/a>, saying he was \u201creluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details on this sector without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Papan is trying again with two bills. One<\/a> largely reprises last year\u2019s measure, with additional reporting required to the city and county. The other<\/a> would bar local governments from approving new or expanded data centers unless the developer discloses information about their water use and plans.<\/p>\n

It would also set other requirements \u2014 like prohibiting development in overdrafted groundwater<\/a> basins in places like the San Joaquin Valley, unless state water managers OK it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot manage what you have not and cannot measure,\u201d Papan said. \u201cThe public likes transparency, and they should.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both bills cleared a key legislative chokepoint this week but face staunch opposition from the tech industry and business groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they run out of water, guess what happens? And they can\u2019t cool their systems \u2014 are they going to succeed?\u201d Papan said. \u201cTo which I say, help us help you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Data center builders don\u2019t tell the public how much water they use, according to a new report \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-649354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}