U.S. water consumption, one year
America’s lawns consume 10 to 126 times more water than its data centers.[1, 12]
This counts only water that is used up: evaporated, taken up by plants, or otherwise not returned to a river or aquifer. Picture each use’s yearly water spread across the land one foot deep. Scroll to see those areas drawn to scale, from the smallest to the largest.
Scroll to start small
Side by side
Every use on one scale
Bars show the best estimate. Thin lines show the plausible range where the share of applied water that is actually consumed is uncertain.
The multiplier compares each use with all U.S. data centers in 2023, measured the way the toggle at the top is set. The dashed bar is a 2028 projection.
In everyday terms
Pick any two things and compare their water.
Every figure is one year of use, except AI prompts, which are counted one at a time.
Reading the news
Why data center water numbers swing by 200×
Many alarming figures measure withdrawal: water pulled from a river or aquifer, most of which flows back. This page measures consumption: water that leaves the local supply. Both are real, but they answer different questions.
By power plants serving data centers in just seven states, 2024. Most of this water returns to its source.[19, 20]
At the power plants serving all U.S. data centers, 2023. An Arizona State analysis lands at the same 650,000 acre-feet.[1, 21]
On-site, by every U.S. data center combined, 2023. This is the figure company reports usually describe.[1]
Borrowed versus gone
A power plant can pull an entire river through its cooling system and send nearly all of it back downstream, a little warmer. Only the share that evaporates is lost to the watershed. Nationally, U.S. thermoelectric plants consume about 3% of what they withdraw.[16]
Headlines that add up withdrawals can be 15 to 200 times larger than consumption figures for the same activity.
Where the concern is real
Growth is fast
On-site use tripled from 5.6 billion gallons in 2014 to 17.4 billion in 2023. LBNL projects 38 to 73 billion by 2028.[4, 1]
It’s concentrated
Google’s Council Bluffs, Iowa campus consumed 1 billion gallons in 2024, enough to supply every Iowa household for about five days.[3, 22]
Timing matters
Evaporative cooling peaks on the hottest days, when many local water systems are already at their limit.[23]
Power source matters
Fossil and hydro power use the most freshwater per kilowatt-hour. Wind and solar use almost none, so the power-plant share depends on the local grid.[24]
Nationally, data centers are a small water user. Locally, one campus can be among the largest users in its community, so where they are built and how they are cooled matters.
Method and sources
Every number on this page, and where it comes from
All figures are annual U.S. consumption, rounded. Where a source reports water applied rather than consumed, the share consumed is this page’s assumption and is shown as a range. Bracketed numbers point to the references below.
| Use | Per year | How it is counted | Refs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data centers, on-site (2023) | 17.4B gal | Cooling and humidification water consumed at the facility | 1, 2, 3 |
| Data centers, power plants (2023) | 211B gal | Water consumed generating their electricity, about 4.52 L/kWh. Includes hydro reservoir evaporation, which some analysts exclude. | 1, 2 |
| AI servers | ≈23% of the above | GPU servers used over 40 of 176 TWh in 2023. Water assumed proportional to electricity (assumption). | 1, 2 |
| Data centers, 2028, on-site | 38–73B gal | LBNL scenarios | 1 |
| Data centers, 2028, with power | 426–766B gal | 325–580 TWh × 4.52 L/kWh, plus the on-site range. Assumes 2023 grid water intensity; a cleaner grid would lower it. | 1, 2 |
| Backyard pools | 150B gal (95–320B) | 6.1M in-ground pools × 12,000–31,000 gal of evaporation, plus 4.3M above-ground pools at about 5,000 gal. Upper bound treats all 10.4M pools as full size. | 14, 15 |
| Golf courses | 425B gal (372–478B) | 1.63M acre-feet applied in 2024 × 70–90% consumed (assumption) | 8, 9 |
| Lawns and landscaping | 2.19T gal (1.53–2.96T) | 7–9 billion gal/day applied outdoors × 60–90% consumed (assumption). Midpoint: 8 billion × 75%. | 12 |
| Irrigated alfalfa | 6.55T gal | 24.8 km³ of irrigation water consumed, 1981–2019 average | 17 |
| All crop irrigation | 26.7T gal | 73.2 billion gal/day consumptive use, 2015 | 16 |
| Area at one foot deep | — | Gallons ÷ 325,851 = acre-feet = acres covered one foot deep; ÷ 640 = square miles. Compared with total state areas. | 25 |
| Single item | Water | Basis | Refs |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI text prompt | 0.26 mL | Median Gemini text prompt, on-site cooling. With power plants, 0.24 Wh × 4.52 L/kWh adds about 1.1 mL, for about 1.35 mL. | 7, 1 |
| Backyard pool | 20,000 gal | Uncovered pool in a warm climate; EPA range is 12,000–31,000 | 14 |
| Sprinkler-watered lawn | 37,900 gal | 75% of the 50,500 gal an irrigated home applies outdoors | 13 |
| Typical golf course | 17.3M gal | Median facility applied 66.3 acre-feet (2020) × 80% | 10 |
| Desert golf course | 104M gal | Median arid-region 18-hole course, 398 acre-feet (2013) × 80% | 11 |
| Acre of Arizona alfalfa | 1.47M gal | 4.5 acre-feet consumed per acre, Salt River Valley | 18 |
| Large data center (100 MW) | 69.9M gal | 725,000 L/day on-site; 2 million L/day (193M gal/yr) with power plants (IEA) | 5, 4 |
| Gigawatt-scale AI campus | 699M gal | Ten times a 100 MW facility. Many proposed campuses are this size or larger. | 5, 6 |
Conversions: 1 acre-foot = 325,851 gallons. 1 Olympic pool = 2,500 m³ = 660,430 gallons. Per-person figures divide by 335 million U.S. residents.
References
- Shehabi, A., et al. 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, December 2024. eta-publications.lbl.gov
- Masley, A. “How thirsty is AI?” Visual explainer of LBNL water and electricity figures. andymasley.com
- The Conversation. “Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much.” Republished by AIhub, September 24, 2025. aihub.org
- ITdaily. “US data centers triple water consumption, regulation lags behind.” itdaily.com
- Renub Research. “United States Data Center Water Consumption Market,” citing IEA, Energy and AI (2025). renub.com
- Office of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. Press release on data center energy and water transparency legislation, March 25, 2026. durbin.senate.gov
- Google. “Measuring the environmental impact of delivering AI at Google Scale.” arXiv:2508.15734, August 2025. arxiv.org
- Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. “Golf courses reduce water usage by 31 percent according to national survey,” December 30, 2025. gcsaa.org
- Golf Course Management. “From acre-feet to outcomes: Interpreting the 2024 GCEP Water Survey,” December 2025. gcmonline.com
- Golf Course Management. “Water management study finds water use down by 29% at U.S. golf facilities,” 2022. gcmonline.com
- GCSAA. Golf Course Environmental Profile, Phase II: Water Use and Conservation Practices on U.S. Golf Courses, 2015. gcsaa.org (PDF)
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, WaterSense. “Outdoors.” epa.gov
- U.S. EPA, WaterSense. “Spray Sprinkler Bodies.” epa.gov
- U.S. EPA, WaterSense. Outdoor pool guide, September 2022. epa.gov (PDF)
- Pool & Hot Tub Alliance pool counts, as compiled in “Swimming Pool Statistics (2026),” RubyHome. rubyhome.com
- Dieter, C. A., et al. Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2015. U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1441, 2018. pubs.er.usgs.gov
- “Monthly Crop Water Consumption of Irrigated Crops in the United States From 1981 to 2019.” NSF Public Access Repository. par.nsf.gov
- American Society of Civil Engineers. Paper on consumptive water use by vegetation, Transactions of the ASCE, doi:10.1061/TACEAT.0006663. ascelibrary.com
- Ceres. “Water Behind the Watts: The Hidden Risk of Powering Data Centers,” August 25, 2026, via Maven’s Notebook. mavensnotebook.com
- Bloomberg Law. “Data Centers Use More Water Than California Cities, Study Says,” August 25, 2026. bloomberglaw.com
- TechRadar. “American data centers in just seven states are reportedly using more water than all the cities in California,” September 2026. techradar.com
- The Invading Sea (republishing The Conversation). “Data centers consume massive amounts of water,” September 5, 2025. theinvadingsea.com
- Study of peak water demand from U.S. data centers. arXiv:2603.02705, March 2026. arxiv.org
- Trellis. “The hidden water liability of AI data centers,” 2026. trellis.net
- U.S. Census Bureau. “State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates.” census.gov