The Hidden Cost of Data Centers
By Maximilian Morici
The United States of America is the leading force in data center construction and operation in the world. While the U.S. boasts a staggering 5,381 data centers, the rest of the world's combined only totals 6,275. California contains the third most centers in the country. Los Angeles and its surrounding areas have one-third of California's total data center infrastructure.
While storing data and running AI computations may seem inherently harmless, these processes have a concerning hidden environmental impact.
What is a Data Center?
IBM defines a data center as a “physical room, building or facility that houses IT infrastructure for building, running and delivering applications and services. It also stores and manages the data associated with those applications and services.”
There are several types of data centers each with a distinct purpose.
Enterprise centers host all IT and data on the premises. This allows for more control over the data.
Public clouds house equipment for use by multiple customers, which can range anywhere from a couple hundred to millions.
Managed data centers are used by organizations that do not have the ability to host their own IT infrastructure on their premises.
California and the Globe's Investment in Data Centers
California is a major player in data center operation, specifically Los Angeles, and surrounding cities, hosting 148 centers and counting. California, along with other states, have seen the potential for economic growth. With little or sometimes no restrictions, the only hurdle left to cross is where the power to operate will come from.
Companies in the U.S. see a major business venture in this growing industry. Since 2021, profits have been steadily rising with an exponential upward curve. The data center market is set to more than double in value from its near $300 billion to a staggering $700 billion by 2034.
Current and Future Data Center Projects
From projects in our own back yard such as One Data Center in Ontario, CA, to the most recent controversial Puente Hills Mall project, citizens are becoming increasingly aware that the land around them is being bought up to build an ever increasing number of data centers leeching resources from local communities.
The scale of some of the newest projects coming to America are hard to comprehend. Some of the largest private companies are breaking new ground in the creation of mega data centers. Blackridge Research and Consulting shows the biggest current projects across the US' Open AI and Oracle’s joint venture is a three year, $500 billion, five-building project that will sprawl across two states. This project alone will consume a colossal seven gigawatts of power.
One gigawatt is one billion watts of energy, enough to power roughly 876,000 homes for one year.
Projects Prometheus and Hyperion, spearheaded by Meta, collectively reach six gigawatts of power for their newest sites. Along with other projects, the demand for more power to run these data centers is ever increasing. This means turning to alternative power sources to facilitate those needs.
How Data Centers are Powered
Nuclear energy appears to be the chosen future power source of many of these mega-centers. While this raises serious ethical and safety concerns, the biggest current concern is the methods being used to cool these data centers.
The data chips, graphics processing units (GPU) and central processing units (CPU), that do all the heavy lifting in these data centers, are usually packed extremely close together. Each generates a tremendous amount of heat. In order to not damage the equipment, they needs to be cooled.
How Data Centers are Cooled
Data center cooling is the process by which these data centers maintain the very specific set of environmental factors that keep the equipment operating optimally, and minimize the risk of damage to said equipment.
There are many ways this cooling can be done, but almost all processes involve water somehow. Data centers consume a staggering amount of water in multiple ways. The amount of water that is being drained for cooling may be quantifiable, however the long term effects on the environment have not yet been determined.
We do know that many data centers do not disclose their energy usage, water usage or any environmental impact that may be a concern. This means many citizens are not aware of the cost of allowing these data centers into their communities.
The Hidden Cost of Data Centers
For context, only 3% of the earth's water is fresh water, and only 0.5% of that is accessible and safe for consumption. A medium sized data center consumes around 110 million gallons of water per year. Larger data centers consume up to 5 million gallons per day, or 1.8 billion gallons annually. That is equivalent to the amount 50,000 people would use in a year.
Fresh water must be used for these processes as saltwater would corrode the equipment, leading to higher costs overtime in equipment replacement. This means that while it would be much more sustainable to use something other than freshwater, it is simply not realistic with the current water treatment technology.
A large amount of this data is from inquiries done in 2021. Reportedly many data centers do not even track their water consumption. Projections on the water usage in the next few years due to demand for AI is nearing a 900% increase.
AI Advocacy
In Mar. 2026, The Associated Collegiate Press hosted their annual conference in San Francisco, where the one of the keynote speakers Emilio Garcia-Ruiz of The San Francisco Chronicle promoted the use of AI as a tool. He argued that while we may not need to use AI for every scenario, it is a tool that should be used to make your life easier, your workload lighter and add convenience to your life.
While the benefits of using AI for certain work-related tasks are noteworthy, the fact remains that these data centers are resource hungry. Many see the arrival of AI integration as inevitable and data centers as simply part of the equation leading humanity into the future. However, the cost of this progress cannot be overlooked.
A single 100 word response using AI consumes around a water bottle, or 500 milliliters of water. While this may seem small, it does add up. The more you ask of AI, the more water it consumes. This raises serious concerns about the continued integration of AI and data centers into our daily lives.
Current Legislation on AI and Data Centers
Mike Hiestand -- a senior legal counselor at the Student Press Law Center -- stated legal litigation on AI was in a bit of a blind spot. AI is relatively new and advancing faster than law can be written. There are few laws pertaining to AI and most only concern the use of AI, not its impact.
Regulation is mostly up to individual states. Zoning laws, land use, power allocation, water rights and infrastructure laws all vary widely state to state. Laws may be shifting, because as time passes, so do new laws. However, some may already be paying the price.
In areas containing a data center residents often end up paying for the power consumed by data centers through higher utility bills.
How to Turn Off AI Overview as a Default Setting
AI is a default setting now on most web browsers. This means that any search, whether you want an AI overview or not, is prompted and responds to said search. Most people simply look past it, unaware they are contributing to an ever growing environmental hazard across the country. Some have even replaced their every google search with an AI prompt.
If you do not want these default settings, look for the settings menu for your internet browser and turn AI overview/assistance off. This varies from browser to browser, but this small act can make an impact in the future of data centers.
Hope
We must consider the impact of what we allow to happen in our country, our cities and our communities. The choices that each and everyone of us makes today will decide the outcome of the future.
Progress is not always linear, but everyday we are giving our water to a cloud that never rains.
This paper was researched and written entirely by hand. Not using AI for this paper has saved: 8,900ml or 17.8 standard water bottles
*Calculations were done using how many questions were searched during the writing process, as well as total word count. (These numbers are averages not exact values) (7000ml for word count) , (1900ml for searches)