Read more on how this new and exciting tool also causes negative impacts on Mother Earth and our water supply.

3 Takeaways:

• A medium-sized data center uses 300,000 gallons of water per day.
• The large data center closest to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community is Liquid Web Phoenix, located at Scottsdale Road and Indian Bend.
• Arizona ranks fourth in the nation in the data-center market.

Though “6-7” was officially declared the Word of the Year for 2025, when you look at it one way, the word “prompt” had a chance to achieve that designation as well. 

A prompt is a user-submitted command generated when creating an image, file, document or project within an artificial intelligence (AI)-based app, such as Microsoft’s Copilot or ChatGPT. 

Sadly, every prompt takes away precious water from Mother Earth because it activates processes at a data center. A data center is a room or building that houses computer servers and related equipment. As part of their operation, data centers rely on cooling systems which utilize fresh water from their local communities and cities. 

According to a study conducted by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a medium-sized data center consumes roughly 110 million gallons of water per year, or 300,000 gallons of water per day, to cool its estimated 2,000 to 10,000 servers. 

To put it into perspective, a company of 2,000 individuals requires an estimated four to 12 servers, if their servers reside on the company’s premises. If they are cloud-based servers, which can be offsite, on average 10 to 25 servers are needed for the 2,000 employees. 

Metro Phoenix is the fourth-largest data-center market in the United States, with 154 data centers. Companies establishing major data centers in Arizona include Microsoft Azure, Aligned Data Centers, Digital Reality and phoenixNAP. 

The larger data center located closest to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community is Liquid Web Phoenix, located west of here at Scottsdale Road and Indian Bend. In hotter climates, like here in the Southwest, data centers need to use more water to cool their buildings and equipment. 

The Uses of AI

Artificial intelligence can help reduce human errors in, for example, accounting, data management and medical scans. When humans are overworked and exhausted from the daily grind, AI can readily assist with mundane and repetitive tasks. 

Similarly, AI can assist with data-entry tasks and report generation, freeing up humans to start and complete complex tasks and projects. 

An example of positive AI use are the operating systems found inside all Waymo vehicles seen throughout Metro Phoenix and other major cities. Waymo’s fleet vehicles use machine learning to ensure all navigation on busy streets remains safe and up to date. The real-time data the vehicles receive while on the road helps refine vehicle sensors and radars to ensure a safe ride to and from various destinations.

All this information must be processed at data centers. In addition to water resources, data centers use a great deal of electricity. For example, in the United States, Meta (Facebook/Instagram) owns and operates 14 data center campuses, totaling 34.2 million square feet at a price tag of $16 billion. Their largest data center is in Prineville, Oregon, a city 150 miles southeast of Portland. 

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2023 data centers consumed about 26% of the total electricity supply in Virginia, followed by North Dakota (15%), Nebraska (12%), Iowa (11%) and Oregon (11%). 

How This Impacts Arizona’s Water Supply

Arizona ranks fourth in the U.S. data-center market because of its more favorable housing market, tax incentive programs and lower power costs compared with other West Coast markets in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. Additionally, Arizona’s location between California and Texas means the state acts as a connecting bridge between markets on the West Coast and in the South. 

Data centers utilize various types of water. In hotter climates, such as Arizona’s, local water resources already may be scarce to begin with, which can ultimately lead to data centers utilizing potable water, which is clean water from local utilities that humans can drink. 

Centers can also use reclaimed water, which is treated sewer water, and gray water, which is untreated water from showers, sinks and laundry that is reused for irrigation or toilet flushing. 

Groundwater is water that comes from rain and snow and is stored underground in layers of mountains, sand, gravel and rock. Replacing groundwater takes time, sometimes thousands of years in warmer climates. 

Raw river water, or water from rivers, lakes and canals, can be used to cool data centers. However, there are minerals and sediments in this type of water, so before it can be used in data centers, it must be treated. 

In oceanic environments such as Finland, data centers are known to use seawater, but this is rare. 

Climate change and population increases have also resulted in Arizona receiving less water from its main source of surface water, the Colorado River. The water from the river is distributed to Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California, as well as part of Mexico. The current regulations covering how much water Arizona receives from the Colorado River are set to expire next year. Currently the Colorado River is responsible for 40% of Arizona’s water supply. 

No matter the kind of water, Arizona’s water sources will continue to be severely impacted with every new data center that is built in the state. 

A Coalition Speaks Up

The No Desert Data Coalition is a group composed of business owners, union members, data scientists, medical professionals, Indigenous land advocates, photographers, researchers, environmentalists, artists and writers, teachers and students, parents and youth, community and labor organizers, and concerned citizens. 

Members of this coalition volunteer their time to represent Arizona as a whole and provide accurate statistics as to why data centers negatively impact public health, water security, tribal sovereignty and much more. 

The coalition has been active this year, making public appearances at city and county town hall meetings in Tucson, Phoenix and other Arizona communities. 

Earlier this year, the coalition, as well as other individuals from the city of Tucson and Pima County, rallied to say no to the construction of a massive data center near the Pima County Fairgrounds, known as Project Blue, led by the Beale Infrastructure Group, the developers behind Amazon’s data center plans. On average, a single golf course in Arizona utilizes 450,000 gallons of water per day. If completed, the 290-acre Project Blue data center would use more than four golf courses’ worth of water. 

The Tucson City Council unanimously voted no, and Amazon pulled out of the project. However, Beale is proposing to build another data center in nearby Marana. A public hearing seeking input from citizens was scheduled for Dec. 10.

Massive data centers are a focal point for the digital infrastructure we use every day. Regardless of whether data centers utilize reclaimed water as opposed to fresh, the massive amounts of water needed to cool these centers negatively impact the natural resources Mother Earth has provided us with. 

Which poses the question to all of us: Is using AI and the resources that go into it for our various projects worth our future generations’ water supply?