Georgia Has Over 200 Data Centers, A Statewide Drought And Residents Who Just Found Out They Were Watering The AI Industry Without Knowing It
This article was compiled with the help of the following sources: E&E News, Route Fifty, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and AInvest.
Residents of Fayetteville, Georgia, started noticing something was wrong when their water pressure dropped. They checked their pipes, checked their bills and eventually complained to the county utility. What investigators found next triggered a political firestorm.
A data center campus 20 miles south of Atlanta had consumed nearly 30 million gallons of water without initially paying for it. One of the two industrial water connections feeding the facility had been installed without the utility’s knowledge. The other was not linked to the company’s billing account at all.
Local officials then sent residents a notification asking them to stop watering their lawns. The same residents whose taps were quietly feeding a data center they did not know existed.
Georgia is home to more than 200 data center facilities. Meta’s Newton County data center alone consumes 500,000 gallons per day, ten percent of the entire county’s water supply.
Georgia legislators have already called for a moratorium on new data center development until their full impact on power, water and communities can be properly studied.
Nationally, AI data centers consumed 17 billion gallons of water in 2023. By 2028, that figure is projected to reach 68 billion gallons.
Georgia is in a drought. The data centers are not slowing down. Like this news article regarding issues surrounding AI and AI Data Centers? Check out our previous article here.
