We Calculated How Much Water Data Centers Actually Use. The Total Will Shock You.

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: There's long been a fight over who gets priority when it comes to water in the American West. The arrival of data centers just made it a lot more complicated. About two-thirds of new data [00:00:12] Speaker 2: centers under construction are being built in drought-prone areas. I would ask the farmers why [00:00:17] Roberto Roque: do they keep planting more pecan orchards? That is a bigger water user than the data center. I hope [00:00:22] Speaker 4: that those people who support the data centers can eat computer chips because where are they [00:00:27] Speaker 1: going to get their food from? Driven by local tax breaks in an industry-wide space race to build, [00:00:32] Speaker 5: these companies promise they won't add to the water burden. Daily water usage over the course of an entire year is roughly equivalent to what a single restaurant would use. But is that really true? [00:00:46] Speaker 6: The water that's used inside the data center itself is only the tip of the iceberg. We've all noticed [00:00:51] Veronica Carbajal: our wells have pretty much dried up. Everything has been so secretive they just don't know. No one knows. [00:00:57] Speaker 8: There will be no future without water. What don't you understand? [00:01:04] Speaker 1: We came to El Paso, Texas in southern New Mexico where Meta, Oracle and OpenAI are building massive data centers to ask the question: How much water does the AI boom actually need? [00:01:24] Speaker 4: Our goal is to get about 2,000 pounds per acre, about 50 to 60 pecans per tree. [00:01:30] Speaker 1: Roberto Roque is a third generation pecan farmer in southern New Mexico. Like many farmers in the southwest, he's seen his water supply dry up from years of drought. [00:01:41] Speaker 4: And the water is just going to flood this field? Yeah, it's just going to go ahead and flood the whole field. It's very difficult because instead of relying on the water that comes from the Rocky Mountains, we've got to invest into agricultural wells and that becomes very expensive. [00:01:57] Speaker 1: It's also becoming more complicated because there's a new water-hungry industry in town: data centers. [00:02:04] Speaker 4: If they consume the amount of water that people are saying that they're going to consume, then what are we going to eat? Because agriculture is going to cease to exist. [00:02:15] Speaker 1: Roberto lives just a few miles from Project Jupiter, a 1,400-acre data center campus being built by OpenAI and Oracle. The companies say it will only require a one-time fill of some 11 million gallons to start up and cool four buildings. [00:02:32] Speaker 4: They like to tell us that it's going to be a minimal percentage as compared to what a farmer uses. But who meters their water? How are we going to know? They're not telling the community the truth. They're not being transparent. [00:02:45] Speaker 1: Around the country, residents and researchers have been pushing for more transparency around data centers' actual water use by filing public records requests. But what they're getting back is vague or redacted. Like this water deal in Stafford County, Virginia, for an Amazon data center. In my home state of Oregon, Google's data center water use numbers were considered a trade secret. After a 13-month legal battle, documents revealed Google was using 1.5 million gallons of water per day, as much as 40% of the city's entire consumption. But even that figure is misleading. [00:03:23] Speaker 6: The biggest part of the water footprint of a data center is not inside the data center itself. It's indirect water consumption due to the electricity that is generated for the data center. That's the part that these tech companies don't disclose. But if you're only talking about what's going on on-site, you're really missing the lion's share of the impact. [00:03:47] Speaker 1: This is exactly what farmers and residents are so worried about on the New Mexico-Texas border. [00:03:53] Veronica Carbajal: When we found out that the data center was moving in, we understood that we were going to lose water. [00:03:59] Speaker 1: Veronica Carbajal is a community organizer and attorney who was born and raised in El Paso. [00:04:05] Veronica Carbajal: So that's the Meta data center construction site over there. They broke ground October of 2025. [00:04:13] Speaker 1: Big tech companies are flocking to the southwest for cheap land, tax breaks and power, and see water scarcity as a solvable problem. [00:04:21] Speaker 9: This facility will be a very low water user. In fact, we have a closed loop system that basically just recycles the same water over and over again as a cooling technology. [00:04:33] Speaker 1: In 2025, 20% of El Paso's water use was just used to cool power plants on the local grid. And demand is only set to increase as more data centers come online. But at full buildout, Meta's new data center could account for up to 43% of El Paso Electric's peak load. [00:04:52] Veronica Carbajal: One new consumer, Meta, wants to use 1000 megawatts. That's going to explode the need for water. [00:04:58] Speaker 1: I met up with El Paso water CEO, John Ballou, who is adamant that the concerns over Meta's water use are overblown. [00:05:06] Speaker 10: Meta coming in is really a drop in the bucket. It adds 0.4% to the overall water consumption. So it's not a big deal. We have plans in place. We have a sustainable supply of water. [00:05:19] Veronica Carbajal: We've asked them time and again why they keep speaking out of both sides of their mouth. To large water users like Meta, they're saying, don't worry, we have plenty of water. And then to residents, they say, we have to raise your rates because we don't have water. [00:05:32] Speaker 1: In fact, it's the 11th year in a row that El Paso water has imposed rate hikes on residents, with a double digit rate increase in 2026. At a city council meeting this past June, fed up residents demanded the city of El Paso cancel its deal with Meta. [00:05:48] Speaker 11: The most violent act of this deal is the sale of water. In a desert region facing climate collapse, the oligarchy has decided that water is a commodity to be sold to a data center for profit. [00:06:00] Speaker 1: But the city council voted 5 to 3 to keep the deal. [00:06:03] Speaker 6: With the numbers being as large as they are, we might find that a lot more people would start protesting if they figure out just how big of an impact these data centers are having. [00:06:14] Speaker 1: Alex de Vries Gao has written numerous peer-reviewed studies on data center water usage. [00:06:20] Speaker 6: In my research, I found that on average, the water that is consumed to generate the power that's ultimately used by data centers is 10 times higher than the water that's actually consumed inside the data centers themselves. But they generally don't report on it. Only Meta provides this number, and in their case, their indirect water footprint is 24 times larger than what they consume inside the data centers itself. [00:06:48] Speaker 1: The numbers are shocking, and it's unclear if local leaders making the decisions are even aware of them. So we're at a community meeting being held by a city councilwoman. We reached out to her to ask for an interview, but she declined. But we're going to see if she can talk to us anyway. [00:07:06] Speaker 8: Cynthia Boyad Trejo, she is the city representative where the Meta data center is located. And despite over 200 people showing up to City Hall, she voted in favor of Meta. [00:07:19] Speaker 1: We came here to try to speak to the city councilwoman about this deal that they have with Meta, and the water commitments that the city has made to guarantee Meta water. She's right behind us, but she won't make herself available to speak with us. [00:07:37] Speaker 9: Can you guys do your interview outside? [00:07:40] Speaker 1: Outside? Yes, sir. Okay, why? She's not comfortable that you guys want to do this interview here. Okay, we'll leave. Yeah. I mean, we just want to ask the councilwoman about how much water Meta and Project Jupiter are going to be taking from the community. Why do you think she won't answer these questions? [00:07:59] Speaker 8: I don't think anybody knows. The council doesn't know. Meta hasn't been able to answer those questions. What's happening in El Paso is that economic power is concentrated in a handful of people. [00:08:13] Roberto Roque: We in El Paso and the BorderPlex region need to get on the AI bandwagon. [00:08:18] Speaker 8: There are private people with private businesses who are recruiting other corporations and businesses to El Paso, and it's a pay-to-play system. [00:08:26] Speaker 1: One example, local businessman Lane Gatti sits on the El Paso Water Board, which is providing water for Meta's $10 billion data center. At the same time, he sold the rights to an undisclosed amount of water to Oracle's Project Jupiter from his own New Mexican sod farm. When I asked Gatti if he would speak on the record, he told me he was under an NDA. Is that a conflict of interest? [00:08:51] Veronica Carbajal: This one is a clear one. When you sit on a board that deals directly with water, then you have a conflict. [00:08:59] Speaker 1: The tech companies say they have nothing to hide, and local officials take them at their word. But on the other hand, I'm getting kicked out of public meetings and running up against NDAs. Nationwide, huge decisions are being made about data centers' water use based on numbers and technical details no one can seem to agree on or are willing to openly discuss. But one person agreed to talk to me. Jerry Pacheco leads the Border Industrial Association, a trade and advocacy group. [00:09:30] Roberto Roque: This is an industry that's moving by the minute. Companies have high stakes, billions and billions of dollars of getting there first with their data centers. Oracle's going to compete against Meta, compete against Google. All of these firms are competing to be the next wave. [00:09:46] Speaker 1: But there's a lot of water at stake here too. Doesn't the community have a right to say, "Hold on, before we say yes, [00:09:53] Roberto Roque: tell us how much water you use." That's what I have heartburn with. They're telling us what the water usage is, okay? [00:09:59] Speaker 1: But De Vries Gao made it clear they're not. He calculated that the total water consumption of AI systems might already be around 200 billion gallons annually, close to two times the world's supply of bottled water. And it's not just his figures that are staggering. According to a recent UN report, data centers' electricity consumption in 2025 alone had a water footprint of about 1.2 trillion gallons. That's enough to fill two million Olympic-sized pools. [00:10:29] Speaker 6: We see that the tech companies are not just not disclosing numbers, they are actively lobbying against disclosure. [00:10:37] Speaker 1: In Texas, lawmakers sent a survey to 341 data centers asking about their water use. Only 17% replied. [00:10:45] Speaker 2: I'm just trying to find a solution to the obvious problem that we're not getting compliance. It's woefully inadequate and we need that information. [00:10:52] Speaker 1: In New Mexico, four Democratic lawmakers are pushing for a statewide moratorium to block large projects like Project Jupiter, until the state sets guardrails for evaluating water usage and other impacts. And at least eight other states have introduced bills that require water use reporting. But even if these companies start to fess up about water use, residents are still left footing the bill for the new infrastructure needed to sustain it. [00:11:20] Speaker 10: We're going to get an impact fee from Meta that represents a small percentage of the actual costs that we're incurring to provide that service. [00:11:29] Speaker 12: So this huge project that's requiring a lot of infrastructure, water, a lot of new demand on the system, residents of El Paso have to pay for that? [00:11:39] Speaker 10: Yeah. Residents of El Paso would be subsidizing any kind of new growth. You can't pick and choose. You have to apply the same yardstick for everybody. [00:11:48] Speaker 1: So while residents get stuck with the bill and their water future is in peril, leaders across the region seem to have bargained that the economic development will be worth it. [00:11:58] Roberto Roque: Project Jupiter are occupying our industrial space and creating jobs and creating that multiplier effect. And again, I compare that. How many people work on a hundred acre pecan farm? Where's the economic value of how you account for the water? [00:12:13] Speaker 13: Yeah. I mean, I guess the question, though, is is economic value when it comes to water the only thing that matters? [00:12:19] Roberto Roque: If you're not considering economics, then you're not allocating your resources to the most efficient use possible. But residents aren't giving up. [00:12:27] Veronica Carbajal: If we continue to delay and raise awareness and tell our stories, I believe firmly that we can stop these projects. What we've seen over and over is candidates as well as elected officials losing because of the data centers. The data centers are on the ballot in November at the city, at the county, at the state, at the federal level. We don't think that any opponent is larger than the power of the people. [00:12:54] Speaker 1: We'll see you next time on our website. We'll see you next time on our website. We'll see you next time on our website. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel. If you want to support our journalism so we can create more videos like this one, join our membership program as a paid YouTube subscriber today. You'll get exclusive perks, including invites to members-only livestreams with the More Perfect Union team. [00:13:20] Speaker ?: We're going to keep following this story. If you have any tips for us, please reach out to us at stories@perfectunion.us. Transcription by CastingWords