Video by Dan Lieberman and Leslie Atkins
Big Tech claims AI data centers don’t use much water. We found them indirectly consuming 10 times that amount.
TRANSCRIPT
DAN LIEBERMAN, MORE PERFECT UNION: 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.
NEWS CLIP: About two-thirds of new data centers under construction are being built in drought-prone areas.
JERRY PACHECO, BORDER INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION: I would ask the farmers, why do they keep planting more pecan orchards? That is a bigger water user than the data center.
ROBERTO ROQUE, PECAN FARMER: I hope that those people who support the data centers can eat computer chips, because where are they going to get their food from?
LIEBERMAN: Driven by local tax breaks and an industry-wide space race to build, these companies promise they won’t add to the water burden.
NEWS CLIP, FORTUNE INDIA: Daily water usage over the course of an entire year is roughly equivalent to what a single restaurant would use.
LIEBERMAN: But is that really true?
