Data Center Water Use Tracker

Tracking how US data centers draw, discharge, and disclose cooling water — permits, enforcement, statutes, and state and local policy, from public records.

Source & treatmentData center cooling Blowdown → sewer → wastewater treatment Evaporation consumes water. WWTP flow combines connected users.
Example cooling-water route through a data center River or wellfield intake, drinking-water treatment, the data center hall, a closed chiller loop, evaporation at a cooling tower, then blowdown to the sewer and wastewater plant. Outfall flow combines connected users; separate meters are needed to measure site consumption. river / wellfield treatment plant data center hall closed chiller loop cooling tower blowdown → sewer wastewater plant treated effluent returns to the river evaporation consumes water rather than returning it through the sewer WWTP outfall flow combines users; site consumption needs separate meters

EPA DMR measurement scope

Overview

A public-record tracker of how US data centers draw, discharge and disclose cooling water — and of the laws, cases, local fights and commitments that govern it. Start with a question below, or with what moved this month.

88laws, orders and bills — 40 enacted125county and city actions — 93 cite water20states with an enacted water commitment74legal paths from 7 data-center activities123water cases, penalties and precedents19named sites with a documented water conflict

Start with a question

Which laws reach a data center?Pick what the campus is doing — building, pumping, discharging — and follow each law to its precedents and live sites.How statutes apply →What has my state or county done?Every state with tracked activity, plus county and city moratoriums and ordinances, filterable by state.States & Localities →Who has committed to what?National strategy (there is none), state commitments by type, local agreements and company pledges.Commitments →Where are communities fighting over water?Named sites with documented water conflicts, and what operators claimed about them.Issues & Claims →What is working?Deployed and piloted fixes: reclaimed water, closed-loop and dry cooling, reporting mandates.Solutions →I have a project — what could reach it?Describe a proposed campus. See which laws could apply, the closest cases, similar fights and how they ended.Check a project →I have a document — what does it match?Paste a news story, permit notice or draft ordinance to find the records that use the same language.Explore →

What moved in the last 30 days

Nothing tracked moved in the last 30 days.

1 county and city actions dated this month or last — 1 cite water. See them on States & Localities.

Manatee County, FL

More: the News tab carries every headline, and the States & Localities tab the last 120 days of state and local movement. How the data is gathered, and what cannot be measured, is on the Sources tab.

Static build 2026-11-06 · Sources: EPA ECHO DMR, VA DEQ, Ohio EPA, Loudoun Water. Data center cooling water tracked via receiving WWTP flow · llms.txt (LLM-friendly summary) · source