Data centers' power-generation water use tops 3.4 trillion gallons a year in 7 states
AndyMasley · x · 2026-08-27
A new report by think tank Ceres (covered by Bloomberg) finds that data centers consume far more water through electricity generation than inside the facilities themselves: in the seven states with the highest data center concentration, generation uses roughly 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater per year — equivalent to 12 times the combined annual water use of Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington, DC. Few power producers have connected rising data-center demand to water supply risks. The original poster (an AI safety researcher) also noted he'd like to see deeper coverage of the Hugging Face attack.
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