Good context, but aren't many of your examples simply putting that water back into the ground? Also, where the water is taken from is the key issue. If this was ocean water nobody would care, but if it's Reston, VA that's a local issue.
"17 billion gallons of water a year" sounds like a lot of water, but it's really not.
DCs are pumping the water through evaporative cooling towers because the latent heat of vaporizaton means there's a huge amount of heat sucked up in the phase change from liquid to vapor. None of the water is being "put back into the ground" except maybe that used during flushing and other maintenance.
"Dry" cooling exists, where there is a closed coolant or refrigerant loop run through radiators, but those require more power, which increases cost and limits how much power can be used for compute (but they also get the say "it makes us use more power, bad for the environment! We're being Green by using evaporative cooling!")
It isn’t like the water magically disappears. It just gets turned into moisture in the air.
Though that can be very far away depriving the local environment or other industry of the water. Extra bad if that water is pumped up ground water.