Were did this myth originate anyways? Did datacenter burst a pipe at some point?
https://datacenters.google/discover-more/photo-gallery/ and scroll down to "The Dalles, Oregon" and well... look at them.
And then its reported water use:
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-wa...
> Google’s water use in The Dalles has nearly tripled in the past five years, and the company’s data centers now consume more than a quarter of all the water used in the city.
> That’s according to records released this week after the city settled a lawsuit against The Oregonian/OregonLive and agreed to hand over data on Google’s water consumption. The company’s water use is poised to continue soaring in the years ahead, as Google has plans for two more data centers along the Columbia River.
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2021/11/the-dalles...
> Google is contemplating two new server farms on the site of a former aluminum smelter in The Dalles, where it already has an enormous campus of data centers on its property along the Columbia River.
> Google says it needs more water to cool its data centers, but neither the company nor the city will say how much more – only that The Dalles can’t meet Google’s needs without expanding its water system. The deal calls for Google to pay for the upgrade.
> Even so, the proposed water pact has attracted scrutiny and skepticism in The Dalles, a riverfront city of about 15,000 approximately 80 miles east of Portland.
> Residents and nearby farmers are concerned about the city’s long-term water supply amid an ongoing drought. They complain they don’t know enough about Google’s actual water use.
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It is possible to do some cooling with closed cycle, though more than a few data centers have been built with open cycle cooling in places were the water table is precarious or in parts of the country under drought conditions.
Unless a data center construction discloses its water use and shows that it isn't using a lot, then people are assuming its using as much as it can (and up to the water rights or capacity that it has). ... Which isn't an unreasonable assumption to make.
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2026/04/more-orego...
> Google’s data centers gulped down nearly 550 million gallons of water in The Dalles in 2025. That’s nearly 40% of all the water consumed in the entire city and a huge jump from the year before.
> The city expects that local water consumption will soar over the next several years and bills will nearly double as The Dalles works to upgrade its aging water system. But the city won’t say how much of the rising demand comes from Google, citing a promise to keep the numbers secret and confidentiality provisions in Oregon public records law.
And data centers are being very cagy with their water consumption because the amount of water that it uses is related to the amount of compute it has and that is being held as an industry secret.
So there's truth in the statement afterall. Clearly a powerful PR campaign going on because there is soooo many dumb takes this kind of argument vanishes.
I do think that amoung all our water uses this is easily the nicest amoung them. I think datacenters are the new factories and as far as factories go they are the cleanest ones ever made. But I suppose if you have the impression AI is useless then it makes sense. But if this is america's future industry we should make room. These centers are even funding infrastructure upgrades. To me they are the closest thing we'll get to reindustrialization in our lives and I would still want a stronger push for even more aggressive buildout.
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...
I don't see it so much as a "PR campaign" against it, but rather it is a populist issue that has broad appeal being against technology companies that are seen as the bad guys.
The data center build outs are not doing themselves any favors by going cheap (evaporative cooling), noisy fans ( https://www.npr.org/2026/09/17/nx-s1-5954414/residents-file-... ) and then being secretive about the "how much is there" makes it look all the more nefarious and underhanded.
The claims of "its taking our water" or "its raising our electric bills" or "its taking our (kids) jobs" or "its stealing all our art" are all things that have some grain of truth to them and easy to rally behind one (or all) of those reasons. The choice of water as the topic is easily the most visible and the one that can get farmers and city folk to agree on.
Going to closed cycle cooling, funding the reuse of waste heat for winter district heating, and such could go to mitigate the public outrage about them... but those aren't the cheapest ways to build them.
Your suggestion on this is mitigation then?
Take an aluminum or concrete plant. I see it as a hard argument to give to these companies that they are somehow special and therefore should do more to their already low impact "factory" If we compared these to large scale steel mills for example. I agree with your point that mitigation can help public opinion but on the opposite side I don't see how you can make a reasonable argument to the builders that this is actually worth funding?
Consider Texas... one would think that they'd be one of the more business friendly areas.
https://www.businessinsider.com/greg-abbott-texas-data-cente... ( https://archive.ph/1bsVF )
> The AI industry is reaping what it sows, as far as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is concerned.
> Abbott said the sharp criticism Americans are lobbing at AI data centers is well-earned during an interview on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.
> "They basically dug their own grave for the problem that's been caused for them, and that's why they got the backlash they deserve," Abbott said.
> ...
> Abbott was initially an ardent supporter of AI data center projects in Texas for their economic benefit. The giant server warehouses can generate jobs during construction and provide tax windfalls to local communities. However, Texans from Abilene to Sulphur Springs have taken hard stances against them, forcing Abbott to change his tune.
> Abbott has introduced new standards for AI data center projects in Texas, including instructing the state's utility commission and electrical grid operator to protect residents from infrastructure costs. He's also suggested a ban on data center developments in rural Texas, and that projects must undergo an audit before moving forward.
Its a "this is going to hit construction" and if its done now trying to mitigate things or if it is going to be getting local city councils getting thrown out until there's one that can pull the permits... or a governor who needs to make a stance to get elected.
Those regulations requiring mitigation are going to happen and it's a "do it now as new construction or be required to do it in three years" as retrofits. New construction and making an effort to mitigate it will likely be the less expensive way over the next decade... but its not the cheapest way to build it today.
In a world of perfectly rational actors you could say "it's still better than the coal plant" but your point is true for the real world and makes much more sense.
Clearly it's the cost AI leaders will have to pay after spending years telling everyone they will die and lose their jobs. They wanted the publicity and with it comes what they sow.
Suprised and glad you responded.
I'm personally more concerned about grid stability, power infrastructure upgrade costs being passed on to existing rate payers before the data center turns on a light bulb, and the impact that direct power consumption has on alternating current quality.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-ai-power-home-applia...
An earlier comment was "one broken pipe?" ... consider one downed power line.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/25/one-fallen-power-line-expo...
> A power line went down outside of Washington, DC, this week. Normally, the grid would only need a few seconds to recover from such an event. But this one took more than 10 minutes because data centers stopped drawing over 3 gigawatts’ worth of power nearly simultaneously.
> The event caused voltage across the PJM grid to spike from Northern Virginia to Chicago, according to data collected by Ting Labs, a startup that runs an IoT sensor network out of people’s electrical sockets.
> The event didn’t cause a blackout, but it did cause lights across the region to flicker. The incident demonstrated the effect that data centers can have on the grid — an outcome that experts believe will become more frequent.
https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_537.801
> Therefore, the Legislative Assembly declares that the waters of the state may not be appropriated, stored or diverted for use outside the basin of origin except in compliance with the provisions of ORS 537.801 (Definitions) to 537.860 (Vested rights protected), including, if applicable, the prior approval of the Legislative Assembly under ORS 537.810 (Diversion or appropriation of waters from basin of origin without legislative consent prohibited).
Evaporative cooling of a data center would constitute a diversion of the water outside of the Columbia River Basin.
Furthermore, the river water rights aren't owned by the city (or the aluminum plant that Google bought). There are other treaties and regulations on the Columbia River to ensure that it has adequate supply for power and for fish.
Google is using ground water rights and pulling. Furthermore, even though there's a river there, the area is in drought conditions. The supply of water percolating from the river into the groundwater isn't sufficient for human needs in that area.
https://www.oregonwaterdata.org/datasets/94c6ec9b19de4ce6b7e...
You can see that the groundwater in The Dalles has a status of "Critical".
Citizens there have been under water restrictions for some time.
https://www.thedalles.gov/news_detail_T4_R275.php
> Voluntary water restrictions currently in place.
https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/poor-snowpack-and-the...
> About 70-80% of the water consumed annually by residents and businesses in The Dalles comes from Crow Creek Reservoir. Fed by South Fork Mill Creek, Crow Creek and a pipeline that diverts flows from the Dog River, it held 123 million gallons on Sept. 4, roughly seven million gallons less than the same time last year.
> While the situation isn’t dire, as Public Works Director Dale McCabe emphasized, it’s not normal. The city issued similar voluntary restrictions last summer after two of its now five groundwater wells went offline; where that was spurred by mechanical failures, however, the current advisory is a product of environmental factors.
> “This is fairly new,” McCabe said. “I’m not remembering a period where we went into curtailment for quite some time before this.”
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Note that "it held 123 million gallons on Sept. 4, roughly seven million gallons less than the same time last year" in context of Google's use of water in 2025: "Google’s data centers gulped down nearly 550 million gallons of water in The Dalles in 2025."
Those are different numbers (current reservoir amount and total use) ... but its something that people will compare.
Compare:
> Annual water withdrawals in Oregon since 1985 have ranged from 7.3M to 9.4M acre-feet (AF)
https://www.oregon.gov/owrd/WRDPublications1/230721_FINAL_Bu...
Note that 7.3M acre-feet is equal to 2.3T gallons. 550M/2.3T = 0.02%
Irrigation: 17.9B gallons/year
Fisheries: 9.7B gallons/year
So, the datacenter at the Dalles uses a shocking 2% of the amount of water used for irrigation alone in the locality.
There's a very simple solution to this, if you actually care about water: tax it to the point where usage is at whatever level you want, instead of focusing on a vanishing minority of the water usage.
https://www.opb.org/article/2026/01/15/as-googles-water-dema...
> When Google purchased a defunct aluminum smelter in The Dalles, it also acquired the right to pump massive amounts of water from underground — up to 3.88 million gallons a day. That’s almost as much water as the entire city averaged per day in 2024.
> The corporation transferred those water rights to the city in 2021, Bentz noted, allowing The Dalles to pump more water from underground. The city only obtained part, not all, of the former smelter’s water rights, Mays said after OPB’s story published.
> But groundwater is limited — there is only so much available before it’s replenished by rain or snowmelt. Oregon is one of many states that have allocated more water rights than the earth can provide at once, causing groundwater wells for residents, farmers and other businesses to run dry — particularly in Eastern and Central Oregon.
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The water rights that Google retained are not taxable without redoing the entirety of the water rights laws for multiple states.
Do water rights need to be revisited in today's climate conditions? Yes. We see it on the Colorado River... and on the Columbia River. But the law, as it stands today, if you've got the water rights that's not something that is taxable. And if you bought more senior water rights, you get to pump before someone else does.
Hits all the right buttons for the motivated reasoner: An eco-disaster that our brains aren’t climate-change numb to. A threat to the most precious fundamental substance in the service of a high-tech fad. An evocative symbol of corporate recklessness in the service of greed.
That it’s not really a big deal compared to, say, almond cultivation is no match for that brain-niche fit.
I jest, of course. The actual argument is something about most water being frozen and how some people live in deserts so we should all live as if we were desert dwellers. As you can tell I'm not very convinced by it.
Water is literally the least scarce thing on earth.