Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...More than 100 recent protests across California and the U.S. over data centers represent the same fierce opposition that horse enthusiasts once mounted against Model T cars. Times change and so must we.
The talk of a new data center brings home how artificial intelligence is wrongly changing our future. The physical embodiments of this rapid evolution are the buildings with the humming servers that are increasingly tapping precious supplies of electricity and water. We are worried about the wrong thing.
According to a 2024 study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, data centers use about 12 times more water off-site, where their power is generated, than on-site for cooling. So it is important to take into account the whole picture.
In the water world, supply is measured in vast quantities known as an acre-foot (an acre of water one foot deep, or about 325,000 gallons). By 2028, nationwide water use by data centers (direct and indirect) could reach roughly 2.9 million acre-feet, according to calculations based on Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data originally measured in liters.
Make no mistake, 2.9 million acre-feet is a lot of water. As one example, that’s more than the entire state of Arizona’s allotted supply of water from the Colorado River.
Yet look at this from the national perspective.
Based on the best estimates available from the U.S. Geological Survey, our American economy consumes about 279 million acre-feet of water from one domestic source or another annually. Put another way, artificial intelligence and its data centers may soon use about 1% of our national water supply by 2028.
A single percent. Is it so bad to use this water to produce a stunning amount of information rather than use this water to grow, say, alfalfa?
In California, one of the hotbeds of data center hysteria is in the Imperial Valley. There, a developer has proposed a “hyperscale facility” that could use 275 million gallons of water a year.
Let’s do some math.
The Imperial Irrigation District holds rights to 3.1 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually. This data center would use about 856 acre-feet a year—a tiny fraction of the Imperial Valley’s water portfolio. The valley uses about 770 times more water today to grow alfalfa than this data center would require. So which use of water in the desert should concern California resource policy?
Granted, the devil is in the details when it comes to siting these data centers. It would be dumb to propose data centers in places with true water and electricity shortages.
Then again, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was wrong to veto legislation requiring these centers to provide information on their water use, somehow thinking the requirement was too onerous. A lack of information on data centers only fuels the hysteria and a perception that he is in Big Tech’s pocket (which he is).
If a new data center would prompt the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to buy more expensive power, that data center should pay the full freight. Something tells me these facilities would be more than happy to cover any local utility’s new cost to provide the electricity they use. To you naysayers, Californians who oppose data centers should demonstrate intellectual consistency by tossing out their laptops, disconnecting from the Internet and breaking out their slide rules. And, for good measure, please sell that climate-unfriendly SUV and buy a horse.
This whole fixation on data centers is revealing how Californians are a bunch of empty talk about the environment. As a glaring example, we gladly import about twice the water in the form of goods than we export. Most of us are likely oblivious about how we are such consistent NIMBYs.
California has faced far bigger resource challenges than these data centers. This whole kerfuffle exemplifies how AI is already way smarter than we are. It distracts from the technology debate that truly matters for future generations.
Tom Philp is a Sacramento Bee columnist. ©2026 The Sacramento Bee. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.