AI Data Centers Strain Local Water Resources, Raising Environmental Concerns

AI Data Centers Accused of Creating Major Problems for Local Water Systems

After Meta started building an enormous data center less than 400 yards away from their house, a couple living in Newton County, Georgia, says their water started to dry up. That began in 2018; years later, two of their bathroom taps still don't work. What water remains has turned into a gritty sludge, littered with sediments. So far, Beverly Morris and her husband Jeff have spent $5,000 on their water problems, they told the New York Times in a new interview, and can't afford to replace their well, which would cost $25,000. "It feels like we're fighting an unwinnable battle that we didn't sign up for," Beverly told the NYT. "I'm scared to drink our own water." The Morrises are the same couple at the center of BBC reporting earlier this month, when they complained about an alarming buildup of sediment in their drinking water. Meta denied that its facility was responsible. Now, new reporting from the NYT suggests that the entire county, which is near Atlanta and home to over 120,000 people, may be in danger of suffering the fate of the Morrises. According to a report from last year cited by the newspaper, Newton County is on track to be in a water deficit by 2030, forcing residents to ration water if the water authority's facilities aren't upgraded. Blair Northen, the mayor of Mansfield, a town in Newton County, described the situation as "absolutely terrible." As it stands, water rates will surge by 33 percent, far above the typical two percent annual climb, Northen told the NYT. Generative AI's ghastly environmental toll is hardly a secret, despite tech companies trying to keep specific data about its energy bills, water consumption, and carbon emissions under wraps. But now we're starting to see more residents witnessing the effects of tech's voracious demands firsthand as the AI race marches on. And it's on track to get even worse. Older data centers like Meta's in Newton typically use 500,000 gallons of water per day, according to the NYT. But permit applications examined by the paper suggest that new facilities will guzzle millions of gallons per day. Chris Manganiello, water policy director of the environmental nonprofit Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, discovered that one data center company in Georgia was demanding a staggering nine million gallons of water per day -- the equivalent of 30,000 households. "It is a tremendous amount," Manganiello told the NYT. Despite these immense demands, AI companies will often prioritize locations with cheap energy instead of water availability because energy is more expensive, hydrologist and director of urban water policy at Stanford University Newsha Ajami told the paper. That puts nearby communities in a bind. Energy can be brought in by building a new power plant, but it's rarely so simple for potable liquids. In the case of Newton County, it gets all of its water from a reservoir that's refilled only by rainfall. For tech companies, "water is an afterthought" Ajami said. "The thinking is, 'Someone will figure that out later.'" A Meta spokesperson said the company conducted a well study on the Morris property, concluding it was "unlikely" that its data center affected their groundwater. According to Mike Hopkins, the executive director of the Newton County Water and Sewerage Authority, who insisted that the county's on good terms with the tech juggernaut, the Meta data center gobbles up about 10 percent of the county's total water use daily. "What the data centers don't understand is that they're taking up the community wealth," Hopkins told the NYT. "We just don't have the water." One solution being pursued is to upgrade the county's water cycling facilities, according to Hopkins. But that solution is in a "race against the clock," and is set to cost more than $250 million. You have to wonder if Meta will help foot the bill.

Their water taps ran dry when Meta built next door - The Economic Times

Meta's data center in Newton County, Georgia, is linked to water problems. Beverly and Jeff Morris faced dry taps and sediment issues. Local wells are damaged, and water costs are soaring. Newton County may face a water deficit by 2030. Data centers consume vast amounts of water. The county is upgrading recycling facilities.After Meta broke ground on a $750 million data centre on the edge of Newton County, Georgia, the water taps in Beverly and Jeff Morris' home went dry. The couple's house, which uses well water, is 1,000 feet from Meta's new data centre. Months after construction began in 2018, the Morrises' dishwasher, ice maker, washing machine and toilet all stopped working, said Beverly Morris, now 71. Within a year, the water pressure had slowed to a trickle. Soon, nothing came out of the bathroom and kitchen taps. Jeff Morris, 67, eventually traced the issues to the buildup of sediment in the water. He said he suspected the cause was Meta's construction, which could have added sediment to the groundwater and affected their well. The couple replaced most of their appliances in 2019, and then again in 2021 and 2024. Residue now gathers at the bottom of their backyard pool. The taps in one of their two bathrooms still do not work. "It feels like we're fighting an unwinnable battle that we didn't sign up for," Beverly Morris, a retired payroll specialist, said, adding that she and her husband have spent $5,000 on their water problems and cannot afford the $25,000 to replace the well. "I'm scared to drink our own water." The Morrises' experience is one of a growing number of water-related issues around Newton County, which is a 1 1/2-hour drive east of Atlanta and has a population of about 120,000 people. As tech giants like Meta build data centres in the area, local wells have been damaged, the cost of municipal water has soared and the county's water commission may face a shortage of the vital resource. The situation has become so dire that Newton County is on track to be in a water deficit by 2030, according to a report last year. If the local water authority cannot upgrade its facilities, residents could be forced to ration water. In the next two years, water rates are set to increase 33%, more than the typical 2% annual increases, said Blair Northen, the mayor of Mansfield, a town in Newton County. "Absolutely terrible," he said. In the age of artificial intelligence, water has become as critical to data centres -- which power the development of the cutting-edge technology -- as electricity. The facilities pump enormous amounts of cold water into pipes that run throughout the buildings to cool the computers inside so that they can perform calculations and keep internet services like social networking humming. A data centre like Meta's, which was completed last year, typically guzzles around 500,000 gallons of water a day. New data centres built to train more powerful AI are set to be even thirstier, requiring millions of gallons of water a day, according to water permit applications reviewed by The New York Times. Data centre companies often demand as much water as they can get, using the tax revenue they pay as leverage, said Newsha Ajami, a hydrologist and director of urban water policy at Stanford. Some projects are so large that they require the land to first be "dewatered," which is when groundwater is pumped out of the surrounding area in preparation for construction. Yet water is a particularly difficult resource to manage. If a municipality needs to add energy capacity to its grid, it can build new solar farms, wind turbines or reopen coal and nuclear power plants. But the water used by Newton County comes from a nearby reservoir that can be replenished with only rainwater. Because electricity is more costly for data centres than water, companies often prioritize building their facilities in places with cheap power, even if the area is drought stricken. That has exacerbated water shortages across the world, Ajami said. "Water is an afterthought" for tech companies, she said. "The thinking is, 'Someone will figure that out later.'" Water troubles similar to Newton County's are also playing out in other data centre hot spots including Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and the United Arab Emirates. Around Phoenix, some homebuilders have paused construction because of droughts exacerbated by data centres. In Colorado, water usage by data centres has become a focal point of renegotiating the Colorado River's water treaty. A Meta spokesperson said the company had recently commissioned a well study on the Morrises' property and said it was "unlikely" that its data centre affected the supply of groundwater in the area. Meta's data centre uses about 10% of the county's total water usage daily, said Mike Hopkins, the executive director of the Newton County Water and Sewerage Authority, which is the county's water authority. The water authority has a good relationship with Meta, he said, but new data centre companies are asking for more resources than what's available. "What the data centres don't understand is that they're taking up the community wealth," he said. "We just don't have the water." For years, Newton County was a growing residential exurb of Atlanta, until that future was put on hold by the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, local officials sought out large industrial projects to fill the void. In the late 2010s, data centres, which can generate millions of dollars in tax revenue, filled that bill. Meta's project was the first major data centre to arrive in Georgia in 2018. At the time, Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, celebrated with Facebook-branded shovels at the state Capitol. New tax incentives and cheap industrial power soon made Georgia one of the top picks in the nation for new data centres. In recent months, Hopkins said, nine companies had applied to build data centres in Newton County, some asking for as much as 6 million gallons of water a day -- more than the county's entire daily usage. Some applicants are tech companies as large as Amazon, according to the water permits, while other companies used aliases to hide their identities. The county's water authority is wrestling with how to accommodate the projects -- and the tax revenue they bring -- while saving enough water for residents. Its solution is to upgrade its recycling facilities, which Hopkins said was a "race against the clock" that would cost more than $250 million. Data centre companies rarely disclose how much water they use, which has left some policymakers in the dark when it comes to regulation, said Chris Manganiello, the water policy director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an environmental nonprofit in Georgia. Last year, Manganiello figured out a way to get access to some data: If a site was so large it needed to rezone land, the company had to submit its water usage as part of a mandatory regional development study. The first time he saw the data, Manganiello said his "eyes popped." One data centre company was asking for 9 million gallons of water a day, equal to 30,000 households. "It is a tremendous amount," he said. The strain on Georgia's water has been so severe that some legislators tried to slow down new developments with a bill to repeal tax incentives. Those efforts were vetoed by Kemp, who said in a statement that the bill would hurt economic development. When Beverly and Jeff Morris bought their house in 2016, it was even quieter than their last home in Madison, Georgia, a speck of a town with one stoplight. They paid $265,000 for the house and its 6-acre lot, charmed by the dirt roads and forest of oak trees where Beverly Morris could ride her horses. "It was supposed to be our forever home," Beverly Morris said. Meta bulldozed the oak forest in 2019, and the well water problems began soon after. The couple has taken out thousands of dollars in loans to grapple with the water issues. Jeff Morris has also delayed his retirement as a machine operator at a nearby wood yard. Three of their neighbors have also had issues with their well water since the data centre was built. Chris Wilson, who lives three doors down, said his house had experienced water pressure issues within months of the construction. To keep the taps from going dry, he replaces the water filters every month instead of every year. Sometimes the water is "so brown, you'd think it came from a creek," Wilson, 40, said. Ben Sheidler, a spokesperson for the Joint Development Authority, which manages the industrial park that Meta's facilities occupy, said the cause of the water issues was unknown. The Joint Development Authority did not do a well water study before construction to determine any potential effects, but the timing of the problems could be a coincidence, he said. "I wouldn't want to speculate that even the construction had something to do with it," he said. "One thousand feet away is a pretty significant distance." The hardest part, Beverly Morris said, is that the house now has just one usable bathroom, which they have to share with her adult son Jon, 48, who has Down syndrome. They tried selling the house, with no luck. "Our Realtor told us, 'There's only one party that would ever be interested in buying this land -- and that's Facebook,'" she said. The walls of her home are decorated with phrases about faith and family, and she has spent countless nights questioning how the data centre fits into God's plan for her. Above the kitchen sink, one sign reads: "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh." In May, after an activist media outlet, More Perfect Union, made a video about some of the issues, Meta sent a community relations manager to visit. The company offered to do the well study and fixed some nighttime lighting to reduce glare, but it took no responsibility for the water issues. When Beverly Morris said she was afraid to cook with the tap water because of the sediment, the Meta employee suggested that she try boiling the water before using it. The company has denied that its employee said that.