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The Standards / Water Use01 / 08

WATER USE

Aquifer depletion, drought risk, municipal system strain

The Framework

What your community should assess, what controls exist, what policy tools are available, and how to verify compliance.

What to Measure

Withdrawal vs consumption, peak daily use, cooling system type, seasonal variability

Engineering Controls

Air cooling, closed-loop cooling, reclaimed water use, water recycling systems

Policy Tools

Withdrawal permits, usage caps, drought-trigger restrictions, technology requirements

Monitoring

Metered reporting, public disclosure, permit review intervals

Example StandardMandatory closed-loop or reclaimed water above defined threshold
Evidence
3 sources
The Dalles, OR — Municipal Water Records

City water records document Google’s growing share of a small city’s water supply over 12 years

  • Google’s annual water use rose from 104 million gallons (2012) to 434 million gallons (2024) — a 316% increase, reaching ~1.19 million gallons per day
  • Google’s share of total city water grew from 12% in 2012 to roughly one-third by 2024
  • The city is now seeking to triple its reservoir capacity and acquire 150 acres of Mount Hood National Forest land to secure additional supply
OPB — Google water demands in The DallesOPB — Fact-check of city response
Mesa & Goodyear, AZ — Water Permits in a Drought State

Reporting and municipal records show data centers receiving multi-million-gallon daily water allocations while Arizona restricts new housing over groundwater shortfalls

  • Mesa guaranteed Google up to 1 million gallons/day at startup, expandable to 4 million gallons/day; Meta secured a separate agreement for up to 4 million gallons/day — equivalent to the daily use of ~49,000 people
  • Arizona’s 2023 groundwater model triggered a moratorium on new housing subdivisions reliant on groundwater, but industrial users including data centers are not subject to the assured-water-supply requirement
  • Statewide data center water use is projected to grow from ~905 million gallons in 2025 to 7 billion gallons annually by 2035 — enough for nearly 200,000 residents
Circle of Blue — Arizona water budgetDCD — Mesa data center water concerns
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — 2024 U.S. Data Center Report

Congressionally mandated DOE report providing the most comprehensive federal estimate of data center water consumption nationwide

  • U.S. data centers consumed 17 billion gallons of water directly for cooling in 2023; projections show this could double to quadruple by 2028
  • Indirect water consumption from electricity generation added another 211 billion gallons in 2023 — 12x the direct cooling figure
LBNL — 2024 Data Center Energy Usage ReporteScholarship — Full report (PDF)