The Water-Stressed Regions — Two-Thirds of New Data Centers in Drought Zones

Why You Build a Thirst in a Desert

The papers that get cited in every deck say nearly two-thirds of new U.S. data centers have been built or planned in water-stressed regions. I have watched people argue the denominator. I have not watched anyone argue the instinct. You build where the land is cheap, the taxes are a brochure, the fiber is already there, and the summer is a furnace — because a furnace is also a place with sun, and sun is a slide.

A desert is honest. A desert tells you there is not enough water. A humid river town lies to you by looking wet. Loudoun looks wet. The Dalles looks like a river. Phoenix looks like a warning. All three have been asked to host a winter that does not end.

Case File: Loudoun's FOIA Summer

In 2024 Loudoun County had a drought long enough to put restrictions on people who water lawns. The same years, records obtained by reporters and researchers showed data-center drinking-water use in the county had jumped on the order of 250 percent since 2019. One accounting put Loudoun's data-center water around 900 million gallons in 2023, and Northern Virginia's near two billion. Another researcher, in coverage I will not treat as a title, put Data Center Alley at about two percent of Potomac Basin water now and a third of it by mid-century on a bad path. I am leaving that researcher's path as a researcher's path. The Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, in the 2025 Washington metropolitan water-supply study — the first of those five-year studies to give data centers their own row — did not write a third. It wrote a different weather: inside the metro, on a baseline path, data-center water on the order of 22 million gallons a day on average by 2050 and more than 80 on a peak day; upstream consumptive use from halls on the order of 5 million gallons a day, about four percent of that upstream total, up from a rounding error. Shortage risk, in the study's language, was a percent that grows. Transparency was a recommendation. I will take the commission's table over a third that makes a better chapter title.

I am not going to pretend I audited the spreadsheets. I am going to tell you the climate. A household was told to skip the lawn. A campus was told it was economic development. Both sentences can be true in a county that has decided the tax base is a personality.

I sat in a hearing room that smelled like carpet and patience. A resident had three minutes. She used two of them on a child's school and one on a number she had copied from a FOIA. A lawyer for a developer had a slide. The slide had a job count. The job count was small and the megawatts were not. The commission thanked everyone. The thanks is the product.

Case File: Memphis, the Aquifer, and a Plant That Took a Number

When xAI arrived in Memphis, the promise that made the brochure possible was a recycling plant: treat wastewater from the T.E. Maxson plant, cool Colossus without mining the Memphis Sand Aquifer, maybe even share the greywater with the Tennessee Valley Authority. The aquifer is not a metaphor. It is the drinking water. Scientists have been saying for years that it is easier to bruise than a slide admits.

They broke ground on an eighty-million-dollar plant in October 2025. In January 2026 Tennessee issued an operations permit to an affiliate, CTC Property LLC. In April 2026 construction paused. The company said it was prioritizing Colossus 2. In June it closed an $820,000 land deal for the thirteen acres. City officials later said the company had committed to restart no later than the first quarter of 2027, after a new engineering team, because the old one had left. Meanwhile the halls draw municipal water. Requests in the public record have been as high as several million gallons a day across sites; one contract figure I have seen cited is 1.2 million a day at a single connection. I am leaving the exact daily number as a range because the range is the honesty. The plant is not running. The aquifer is.

A woman who works on aquifer protection told me, on a call I did not record, that a groundbreaking is not a gallon. I said I knew. She said then write the pause. I am writing the pause.

Case File: Cerrillos, Where a Neighbor Stayed

Santiago has been in a long drought. Google wanted a second Chilean hall in Cerrillos, on the order of two hundred million dollars, with a cooling design that, in the documents people fought over, meant on the order of 169 liters a second from the Santiago Central Aquifer. Neighbors sued. The municipality sued and then, after the company promised air cooling, mostly left. One resident, Claudia Fuentes, stayed.

In February 2024 Chile's Second Environmental Court partially pulled the permit and told the evaluation service to put climate change back onto the aquifer. In July, Google's local vehicle, Dataluna, withdrew the original project. In September the old environmental qualification was put in the ground. The company said it would start over with air. Starting over is a victory and a delay and a later room. I am putting it here because it is one of the few times a town made a campus rewrite the physics instead of the press release.

I have not been to Cerrillos. I have been to meetings where a lawyer said Latin America was "manageable." Manageable is a word that means the neighbor has not stayed yet.

Mesa, Phoenix, and the Honesty of Heat

I will not pretend Arizona is a mystery. The heat is the product and the problem. Campuses have gone there for land and sun and a tax story, and then they have argued about effluent and CAP water and whose drought is a "challenge." I am not going to reconstruct every city-council fight. I am going to say that a place that already rations a lawn should not have to learn the word WUE from a consultant. The consultant is paid to make the heat sound like a partnership.

Inez does not live in Mesa. Inez lives in a house that is too warm because I set a number. That is not the same drought. I am not going to insult Mesa by pretending it is. I am going to say that a thermostat is how a person meets a grid, and a grid is how a campus meets a river, and the meeting is this book.

South Memphis, Which Is Not a Slide

I am not going to write South Memphis as a tourist. I have not lived there. I have read the letters from Young, Gifted & Green and the NAACP and I have watched a company treat a zip code as an industrial park with a public-relations problem. Boxtown and the streets around the Maxson plant already knew the air. The turbines were a new chapter of an old book. LaTricea Adams said the community was not a playground. I am not going to improve her sentence.

What I will add is the assignment. The model that answers a prompt in a kitchen I can afford is cooled and powered, in part, by a place that was already carrying other people's industry. Environmental justice is not a chapter I invented. It is a map. The map has schools and churches and a supercomputer. Keep the rooms separate: the aquifer is a gallon, the turbine is a lung, the pause is a calendar. Knock the walls down and you get a slide that says innovation cluster.

The Third Hall, Across a Line

Mississippi is not a sequel. It is a jurisdiction. A line on a map is how a company finds a new air board. Colossus 2 and the Southaven turbines are the industry's oldest trick: if the first county learns the word permit, try the next one. I said this to Merritt. He said it was forum shopping. I said it was hydrology shopping. He wrote both and put a slash.

What Two-Thirds Feels Like if You Are a Siting Map

I have seen the map. I am not going to reprint the map. The map is a heat layer and a water-stress layer and a fiber layer and a tax layer. The overlap is the two-thirds. The overlap is also a kind of intelligence: the industry is not stupid. It puts the thirst where the land is cheap and the politics are a chamber of commerce. A chamber of commerce is a room that says yes before the aquifer has a lawyer.

A consultant offered to sell my old company a "community acceptance package." I said acceptance was not a package. He said everything was a package. I did not take a second meeting. I sent Merritt a note that said package. He put a question mark that was the most expensive punctuation in the apartment.

Arizona, Without a Postcard

I have been to Phoenix in July. I do not recommend it as a personality. I recommend it as an honesty. The heat is not a metaphor. The CAP canal is not a metaphor. The arguments about effluent and "would have been dumped anyway" are the replenish conversation in a drier font. A gallon that would have been dumped into a tired river and is instead evaporated on a campus is a gallon that changed jobs. Changing jobs is not creating water.

A city staffer told me, on a call that kept dropping, that the brochure always showed a mountain at dusk. I said the dusk was a time of day the campus does not observe. She said she knew. She said she still had to show the mountain. I said then show the canal too. She said the canal was "sensitive." Sensitive is a cousin of secret.

Mesa in a Sentence I Will Not Make Pretty

A campus in the Phoenix metro is a bet that effluent and politics will outlast a drought. Sometimes the bet pays in a permit. Sometimes the bet pays in a protest. I am not going to list every city-council video. I am going to say that a mountain at dusk is a lie if the canal is sensitive. Show the canal. If you cannot show the canal, you are not ready for a fence.

Loudoun Taxes, the Love I Will Not Mock Blindly

I said a tax payment can be real. Loudoun's data-center take is a number that pays for things people like — schools, if the politics line up, and a government that can hire. I will not do the cartoon where every hall is a thief. I will do the cartoon where a school and a tap are asked to share a personality and the personality prefers the hall. The FOIA summer is what the preference looks like when the rain forgets.

The Two-Thirds Map, Again, With a Consultant

The community-acceptance package I did not buy had a page called narratives. The narratives were: jobs, tax base, "world-class infrastructure," a STEM scholarship that would be named later. There was no page called gallons in July. I asked where July was. He said July was operations, and operations was after entitlements. Entitlements are how you get the fence. July is how you use the tap. The package sells the fence.

Quincy, Boardman, and the Columbia's Other Towns

The Dalles is famous because a newspaper won. Quincy, Washington, and Boardman, Oregon, are famous among people who site halls because the power was cheap and the neighbors were fewer. I have driven past warehouses that do not sell fruit anymore. I have seen a school-bond argument that had a campus in it the way a soup has salt. I will not pretend each town is The Dalles. I will pretend each town is a gallon, because that is the unit that travels.

Aragón, the Imperial Canal, a 48 Percent Ask

Amazon's first Spanish region sat down in Aragón — Villanueva de Gállego, Huesca, El Burgo de Ebro — in a dry country that still has a canal with an imperial name. The Canal Imperial de Aragón is not a metaphor. It is a ditch with a history, carrying water to farms and towns and, now, to halls. In March 2025 the company asked to raise the permitted water at the first three sites by about 48 percent, from 36,461 cubic meters a year at each to 53,961. The paper trail, as the regional press laid it out, said the original environmental math had assumed on the order of 555 hours a year of cooling water. Two summers later the climate had offered a different year. The new ask wanted something like 900 hours.

I have not sat in Zaragoza's hearing room. I have sat in rooms that used the same sentence: the permit did not anticipate the weather. The weather is the product. A campus that needs more hours because the air is hotter is a campus admitting that the brochure's mountain-at-dusk was a season, not a design.

Amazon's public math, in the coverage I read, said the ask was a rounding error on the canal's industrial-and-irrigation appetite — hundredths of a percent. Rounding errors are how you win a table. A farmer does not drink a percentage. A farmer drinks a turn. I am not going to pretend a data hall drank a province. I am going to pretend a 48 percent ask is a confession that the first number was a hope.

Later in 2024 and into 2026 the expansion paper grew — more hectares, more buildings, more substations, rainwater reservoirs in the renderings, municipal networks as backup, environmental approvals that kept landing. I will not reconstruct the Boletín. I will say that a region can decide a campus is a general interest and still have a canal. General interest is a legal spell. A spell does not lower a wet-bulb.

Texas Heat, Without a Brochure Map

I am putting Texas here as a temperature, not as a tour. ERCOT is a grid that has already taught the country what a winter and a summer can do when the reserve is a feeling. The new halls arrived anyway, because land was cheap and gas was a neighbor and a governor could say future. I will not print a megawatt I have not held for a particular Texas county. I will print the instinct. You build a thirst where the air is already a furnace and you call the sun a slide. Chapter 5's two-thirds is that instinct with a citation. Texas is that instinct with a personality.

A person I used to work with moved to a metro that was collecting campuses the way other metros collect stadiums. He texted a photograph of a fence and a sky that looked like a threat. He said the town hall had used the word partner. I said partner is a tax word. He said the water utility had used the word study. I said study is a later room. He said he knew. He sent a second photograph of a dollar store and a substation. I did not ask him to go back. Some friends are how you know a chapter is not only Virginia.

The Sensitive Canal, Practiced in Another Accent

Arizona's "sensitive" and Aragón's imperial ditch and Uruguay's salty tap are the same family. The family resemblance is not a conspiracy. It is hydrology plus a brochure. Show the canal. If the canal has a royal name, show the name. If the canal is a CAP lateral, show the lateral. If the canal is a sentence a staffer will not put in a PDF, you are not ready for a fence. I have now said show the canal enough that Merritt will shred a page. I am saying it once more and then I am leaving it. The canal is the chapter.

West Des Moines, the Table a Utility Was Willing to Print

I have been rude about silence. I owe a page to a utility that printed a table.

West Des Moines Water Works, which serves a city next to Iowa's capital that Microsoft turned into a campus collection — five halls, a sixth in the pipeline, hundreds of acres — published the gallons. Not a global intensity. The gallons. 2020: about 43 million, 1.7 percent of what the utility pumped. 2021: 62 million, 2.3 percent. 2022: 54 million, 2 percent. 2023: 41 million, 1.5 percent. 2024: 68.58 million, 2.6 percent. 2025: 62.34 million, 2.4 percent. Month to month, the utility said, two to seven percent. A six-year average around 2.1. On the newer regional system, Central Iowa Water Works, less than one percent, and in a July that had an irrigation ban, still less than one.

The utility's general manager went on television and said the halls were not why the sprinklers stopped. Nitrates were. Agriculture is a different book and also the same river. I will not collapse a fertilizer problem into a chatbot to make a chapter tidy. I will also not collapse a 2.4 percent into a nothing. In one twelve-month window the company was the city's largest user. Largest and a fraction can sit in the same sentence. That is the adult sentence. Loudoun's FOIA summer is the other adult sentence. They are not the same town.

Microsoft and the utility signed a memorandum in 2023. Later coverage and the utility's own fact sheet put about $25 million of company money into system work: a tower, an aquifer-storage-and-recovery well the utility said could hold on the order of 300 million gallons in the Jordan Aquifer, a sentence about resiliency that I will not mock because a tower is a real object. The utility said an agreement allowed up to 5 million gallons a day. Microsoft said, in the season of the questions, that the Iowa halls used evaporative cooling about a tenth of the year and air the rest, and that new designs from August 2024 were aiming at zero-water cooling as a primary method. I am leaving the zero as a claim. Claims are Chapter 6. The table is this chapter.

I sat with a person who had family in that metro and asked whether the table made the town feel better. She said the table made the town feel seen. Seen is not watered. Seen is the difference between Iowa and a black cell. I said I would put the table in the book. She said then put the nitrates too. I have.

A campus can be 2.4 percent and still be the personality in the letters to the editor. A lawn can be 30 to 40 percent of a summer peak and still lose the argument about who is greedy, because a lawn does not have a press team. I am not going to defend a lawn. I am going to defend a table. Print the table. If the table is small, you have a fact. If the table is large, you have a fight. Both are better than a cologne.

Rockville, a PDF, a Percent That Grows

I read the Interstate Commission's 2025 study the way I read the UN pages: on one side, on a counter, with a lemon that had nothing to do with the Potomac. The study is a five-year habit for Fairfax Water, WSSC, and the Washington Aqueduct. 2025 was the first year the habit included halls as a category. That sentence is a disclosure event. A category is how a river admits a new mouth.

The numbers I already put next to Loudoun's FOIA are the ones I will keep using: 22 and 80 inside the metro by 2050, on a baseline; about 5 upstream, about four percent of that upstream consumptive pile; a shortage chance that the authors were willing to write as a percent. I am not going to pretend 80 million gallons on a peak day is a third of a basin. I am going to pretend 80 is a day a drought notices. Peak is the wet-bulb napkin in a government font.

A planner I will not name said the study was "conservative." Conservative is a word people use when they want a higher number without owning it. I said then file a comment. He said comments were for people with more time. I said time was the product the queue already stole. He did not laugh.

I am glad the commission wrote transparency as a recommendation. Recommendations are not statutes. They are a later room with a light on. The Dalles taught you what a light costs. Loudoun taught you what a FOIA costs. Iowa taught you what a table costs: a utility willing to be bored in public.