Concerns are being raised about the environmental impact of Virginia’s data centers after a report revealed that their water use has increased by nearly two-thirds in the past five years. With the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, there are fears that the situation will only get worse.

The Financial Times report cites data obtained through Freedom of Information requests showing that Virginia data centers used more than 1.85 billion gallons of water in 2023 alone, compared to 1.13 gallons in 2019. The figures reportedly come from water authorities in Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and Fauquier counties.

The massive water consumption is no surprise, as Virginia is considered the data center capital of the world and is home to more than 300 such facilities. The data centers use water primarily to cool the servers and other infrastructure racks they house. The biggest concern is that this consumption will only continue to rise as AI becomes more prevalent. That’s because AI training tasks are considered even more energy-intensive than regular computing workloads.

The report adds that some of Virginia’s data centers are located in water-stressed regions, including some areas suffering from persistent drought.

Over the past decade, Virginia has seen significant growth in its data center ecosystem as cloud computing has grown. According to the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the state’s data center capacity has increased fivefold from 2015 to 2023.

Previously, concerns were raised about the amount of land taken up by data centers and also the huge electricity consumption of such facilities. In 2023, several climate protection and historic preservation organizations joined forces to form the Virginia Data Center Reform Coalition. According to environmental news website Grist, this organization is concerned that data centers are springing up at an alarming rate without considering the consequences of having such a large number of data centers in one place.

The Grist report added that in Loudoun County alone, data centers served by the county’s water authority increased their drinking water use by 250% between 2019 and 2023. Worse still, their water use peaks in the summer, when the risk of drought is much higher.

Julie Bolthouse, director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council, a Virginia-based nonprofit, told the Financial Times that the report “raises questions about how sustainable the data center industry is.”

However, not everyone is as concerned as the environmentalists. Michael Lesniak of water utility company Aquatech International Inc. responded to the story on LinkedIn, pointing out that most data centers operating in Loudoun use recycled water from wastewater treatment plants that would otherwise be discharged into the sea in the Chesapeake Bay.

Lensiak also claims that fears of further increases in water consumption are unfounded, as most newer facilities, including those designed for AI workloads, use “waterless” cooling systems.

It’s notable that the largest data center operators in the U.S. have all pledged to take action to address concerns about their water use. In 2022, Amazon Web Services Inc. announced a plan to become “water positive” by the end of the decade, meaning the company will return more water than it uses. The plan includes recycling water in its data centers and making it available to farmers for irrigation.

On the other hand, Microsoft Corp. admitted last year that its data center water consumption had increased by about a third due to the increasing demand for AI. However, the company also plans to become water positive by 2030.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Microsoft Designer