39 States Weigh About 100 Data Center Water Bills as Projected Use Climbs to 72.6 Billion Gallons by 2028

The water fight over data centers has moved from local zoning hearings to statehouses.

The National Conference of State Legislatures counts about 100 bills and resolutions in 39 states from 2025 and 2026 that deal with data center water use and related planning. A recent report projects U.S. data center water consumption will climb from 17.4 billion gallons in 2023 to 72.6 billion gallons by 2028. It is a projection, not a measured total.

What the states are actually passing

Most of this year's legislation is about disclosure, not bans. The goal is to learn what a facility will use before it is built and what it actually uses once it runs.

• Utah (HB 76) requires operators of large new data centers to talk to water providers before construction and report water use every year.
• California (AB 2619) requires operators to estimate water use on their first business license application and report the prior year's use at renewal.
• Virginia (HB 496 and SB 553) puts the burden on suppliers, who must separately report the volumes of potable and reclaimed water delivered to covered data centers.

Permitting is the other front. California's AB 2469 requires a water supply assessment before local governments approve new or expanded data centers that raise peak water use. Applicants must disclose projected demand and efficiency measures, and they must cover the full cost of water infrastructure upgrades. From 2028, they must also file a water scarcity plan describing how operations would adjust in a drought.

Florida's SB 484 bars water allocations for large data centers when the proposed use would harm local water resources or violate zoning and comprehensive plans. It requires reclaimed water in place of some or all surface or groundwater when supply and feasibility allow. Applicants seeking an average of 100,000 gallons a day or more must submit a conservation plan.

Oklahoma's SB 259 goes further on operations. It bars using groundwater in open-air evaporative cooling systems.

Is the number big or small?

That depends on who is doing the comparing. Shayle Kann of Energy Impact Partners, host of the Catalyst podcast, describes the two camps as talking past each other. Opponents say data centers drain aquifers and compete with towns for drinking water. Proponents call it a rounding error next to agriculture.

Kann offered a rough illustration. A 300-megawatt data center with evaporative cooling uses about 150 million gallons a year, he said. A combined-cycle power plant of the same capacity would use roughly three times that. The same volume would irrigate about 550 acres of soybeans.

His guest, Tim Shedd of Ebullient Insights, an expert in data center thermal management, walked through how cooling is changing. High-density chip racks are pushing developers away from air cooling toward single-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling.

Kann also drew a line between history and future. Past consumption is one question. What new facilities will use is another.

Reuse and the federal angle

The same report argues that reusing treated industrial discharge onsite could ease the strain, especially in water-scarce regions and during prolonged drought. It points to the Environmental Protection Agency's 2026 water-reuse plan, which involves Amazon Web Services and aims to clear regulatory barriers to recycled-water cooling.

The politics

Voters are not waiting for engineering studies. A Gallup survey found 70% of Americans oppose building new AI data centers in their own communities. Fox News reported that Senate candidates are hearing growing anger over electricity costs, water consumption and sprawling developments. Some politicians are calling for moratoriums. Others are going after tax incentives or demanding that projects generate their own power.

A Fox News opinion piece takes the opposing view on the remedy. It says the concerns are real and that no family should subsidize grid upgrades demanded by one of the world's wealthiest companies. But it argues that a campaign against the physical infrastructure of AI repeats the decades-long pattern of surrendering factories and supply chains to foreign competitors. In its words, data centers are "the factories of the next industrial age." It cites the International Energy Agency's projection that data center electricity use will rise substantially in both China and the United States through 2030, and it warns that China is building while America debates.

That argument is about electricity and industrial strategy. It does not answer the water question. The state bills mostly don't either, since disclosure and permitting are designed to produce the data that would.

Oklahoma is the one to watch

Discussion of a data center moratorium is gaining attention in Oklahoma, where Gov. Kevin Stitt and the Legislature would decide the outcome. A filed state bill or public endorsements of a construction pause would turn talk into policy. Statements from major utilities or water districts could also shape the debate.

The open question is whether lawmakers stick with reporting requirements and reclaimed-water mandates or move to outright pauses. Oklahoma is the clearest place that choice could be made.