In the first week of May, two data center projects, one in Arizona and the other in Georgia, were caught using public water without authorization.
In both cases, the data center developers consumed water that they were prohibited from collecting, in communities that were already facing water stress — and, in both cases, it was the residents who discovered this.
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When residents complained about low water pressure in Georgia or dust control efforts in Arizona, they unwittingly alerted authorities in regions marked by depleted water supplies, exacerbating a growing conflict over water use by data centers across the country.
In 2023, US data centers directly consumed 66 billion liters of water, a number that is expected to rise to between 144 and 276 billion liters by 2028, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In Texas alone, a study by the Houston Advanced Research Center estimated that data centers would use 185 billion liters in 2025 and up to 1.51 trillion liters in 2030 — the equivalent of reducing the level of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, by more than 4.8 meters in just one year.
Texas is already experiencing a crisis: reservoirs and aquifers are drying up across the state, the city of Corpus Christi is preparing to declare a water emergency with 25% cuts in consumption, and communities are fighting over what water remains.
So complaints from residents in Tucson and Fayette County are part of a larger pattern.
Google’s data centers in The Dalles, Oregon, a city of 16,000 people, consumed 1.34 billion gallons in 2021 — about a quarter of the city’s entire water supply.
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Google funded the city’s lawsuit against a local newspaper that tried to obtain this data via a freedom of information request, claiming that the numbers were a trade secret.
A Meta data center in Newton County, Georgia, reportedly impacted nearby private wells, forcing families to haul water and replace appliances clogged by sediment.
In South Carolina, environmental groups challenged Google’s license to capture 5.7 million liters per day. Meanwhile, in Utah, a data center proposal linked to Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr. Wonderful) has generated nearly 3,900 protest filings against a water rights application that would transfer irrigation water to industrial use.
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Now, more than 50 cities across the country have passed bans or moratoriums on new data center construction — including Fayetteville, Georgia.
“Being a good neighbor is a top priority everywhere we operate data centers,” a Meta spokesperson told Fortune in a statement. “We commissioned an independent well study in Georgia, which confirmed there is no relationship between the well problem and the operations of Meta or our data center. We remain committed to supporting the Stanton Springs community and have provided more than $4.5 million in direct funding to area schools and nonprofits.”
The company also shared its water management goals, including the objective of becoming “water positive” by 2030 — that is, restoring more water than it consumes in the river basins where it operates. Google did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
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Fayette County, Georgia: No Water Pressure
Throughout last year, residents of the high-end Annelise Park condominium, located about 20 miles south of Atlanta, in Fayette County, Georgia, noticed that their water pressure was plummeting, according to Politico.
Despite the absence of wells in the county, the situation prompted the local water company to investigate. The investigation found two industrial supply connections feeding a 249-hectare data center campus, codenamed Project Excalibur, developed by Quality Technology Services (QTS), a company belonging to Blackstone.
In May 2025, Fayette County’s water system sent a letter to QTS detailing two separate water meters: one installed without the county’s knowledge and another not linked to the company’s billing account.
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The county administration released a statement clarifying the letter, saying the issue arose after the county began replacing all 33,000 residential water meters with smart models.
During the switch, one of the two meters remained on the old system and, therefore, did not bill QTS. By the time the error was discovered, QTS had already consumed more than 110 million liters, Politico reported — the equivalent of 44 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
“Additionally, staff has determined that water usage at the above-mentioned meters, along with the Tyrone Road fire line meter, significantly exceeds the maximum volume originally approved during the planning process,” read the initial May 15, 2025 letter, reproduced in full by The Citizen.
The letter recorded retroactive charges of $147,474, the amount paid by QTS — and which, according to county administration, was calculated at a rate of “$6.46 per thousand gallons for construction, double the normal retail rate for past water use.”
When asked why the county didn’t fine QTS, water department director Vanessa Tigert said the company is the county’s largest customer and that the relationship requires partnership, according to Politico.
The QTS campus, which currently includes 13 buildings totaling approximately 576,000 square meters, is expected to generate between $150 million and $200 million per year in property tax revenue for the city.
QTS states that it will utilize a closed cooling system that will not consume water for cooling when in operation, and that the current high consumption was linked to temporary construction activities such as concreting, dust control and site preparation.
However, work is expected to continue for another three to five years.
“Any suggestion of inappropriate water use by QTS is categorically false. A recent billing error caused certain water meters to be linked incorrectly by the Fayette County water company,” QTS said in a statement sent to Fortune. “As soon as the issue was identified, it was corrected and all charges were paid.”
“Water use will be restricted to employee needs, such as bathrooms and kitchens, being approximately comparable to the annual consumption of four American homes.” QTS also refuted claims that water consumption was affecting residential pressure. The bill corresponds to approximately one year of use.
The Fayette County administration then released another statement adding that the issue arose while upgrading water meters to smart models.
“For the past year, QTS’s monthly consumption has represented less than 1% of the current production and authorized capacity of the Fayette County water system. The company can produce 86 million gallons per day and currently produces approximately 65 million gallons per day.”
This all came to light while a resident was running for a seat on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners. Local lawyer James Clifton obtained the 2025 letter sent by the water company to QTS through an access to information request and posted it on Facebook.
Drought conditions in Georgia have worsened since the project’s announcement, and the entire state is currently experiencing severe to exceptional drought, with destructive wildfires raging across the southern part of Georgia. Last month, Governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency over the situation.
QTS also has a history of water regulatory issues elsewhere. In Iowa, state officials discovered 40 unauthorized wells on the land of the company’s Cedar Rapids data center in 2025, prompting Linn County to impose a $20,000 fine.
Tucson, Arizona: 2.46 million gallons used for dust control
In August 2025, the Tucson City Council unanimously rejected any involvement with the Project Blue data center complex, originally connected to Amazon, which was to be located just outside the city limits.
As the region receives, on average, only between 18 and 25 centimeters of rain per year, the council expressed direct concern about water and electricity consumption when rejecting the project.
Less than a year later, Amazon abandoned the project, but developer Beale Infrastructure purchased the land from Pima County and continued construction while seeking new partners.
Amazon did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Recently, a resident asked a city employee whether the water used to control dust at the Project Blue site came from the city, triggering an investigation into water use at the site.
City Manager Timothy Thomure sent a letter to Beale stating that the city discovered that a contractor, Ames Construction, had obtained a water meter for construction water within the Tucson service area and transported that water outside city limits to the Project Blue site, where it was being used for dust control — all without authorization.
In a letter sent to the Arizona Daily Star, Beale stated that the city had indeed issued “a temporary water permit in accordance with normal procedure.”
Thomure required Beale to replenish about 2.46 million liters, roughly equivalent to the annual consumption of six to seven American homes. Compared to the operational consumption of data centers, it is a fraction of the water used, but it is still a developer taking water from a city that had explicitly refused to provide it.
Beale said the city had issued a temporary water permit through normal channels. City spokesman Andy Squire said the document was not a permit, but an application for a construction water meter intended for use within Tucson Water’s service area, and that the contractor did not disclose that the water would be taken outside municipal limits.
Earlier this week, the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality issued a Notice of Violation against Beale for “excessive dust that exceeded property lines and lack of dust control measures,” according to local broadcaster KGUN9.
Some developers are installing large projects just beyond municipal limits to escape the state Water Supply Guarantee and Adequacy law, which requires proof that a project can meet its water needs for 100 years. Building outside urban boundaries allows companies to bypass this requirement while continuing to rely on nearby water infrastructure.
Earlier this month, states in the lower Colorado River basin — Arizona, Nevada and California — signed a new conservation agreement to save 1.23 trillion gallons of water from a river system that was first divided between the states in 1922, when metro Phoenix had about 30,000 residents. Today, it is home to approximately 5 million.
On average, a medium-sized data center consumes around 416 million liters of water per year for cooling, enough to supply the annual consumption of around a thousand homes. Larger installations can consume up to 19 million liters per day.
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