Water is not something a community can make more of, and it should not be handed to a server farm at the expense of the people and farms that depend on it. Yet that is exactly what is happening as AI data centers chase the cheapest water they can find, even in the driest places.
In California's Imperial Valley, a data center developer that publicly promised to use no Colorado River water is now suing for 260 million gallons of it a year, about what 7,300 residents use, after its recycled-water plan fell through. The valley draws every drop of its fresh water from the overstretched Colorado River. The company's workaround is to pay farmland to go dry and claim that farm's water for cooling.
This is not a one-off. Texas data centers are projected to use more water than 6 million households by 2030, and one of its cities is already rationing. The pattern is the same everywhere: a buildout racing ahead of the water that exists to support it.
I am asking you to require any large data center to prove a sustainable, non-potable water source before it is approved, not after it has broken ground. Communities and local officials trying to pause these projects, like Imperial County, should not be sued into submission for protecting their own water.
Please make sure scarce drinking and river water goes to people and farms, not to cooling servers.
