Utah has taken steps to rein in water use by large data centers, but conservationists and other advocates say more needs to be done to protect the state's dwindling water resources.
Lawmakers recently passed the Data Center Water Transparency Amendments, which require server farm developers to provide an estimate of future water use. The facilities often need massive amounts of water to cool their servers, particularly for artificial intelligence systems.
Zach Frankel, Great Salt Lake Waterkeeper and executive director of the Utah Rivers Council, said in some rural areas, there is not enough water to go around.
"Two data centers in a community will use as much water as a city of 100,000 people," Frankel said. "You could see data centers come in that essentially triple the water use compared to the municipal population."
Frankel is particularly concerned about the Great Salt Lake's health and water shortages in other regions. Utah is currently in a severe drought after several years of lower-than-expected snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin.
The data center industry calls the regulations "burdensome" and predicted they could hinder economic growth.
Utah is a rapidly growing hub for data centers, featuring 48 operational facilities with more than 900 megawatts of capacity.
Frankel stressed the state allows server farms to keep their actual water use records secret and many local elected officials are unprepared to negotiate terms with data center developers.
"We, as a state, prevent the public from knowing about what some of our water suppliers are doing," Frankel said. "They've allowed some of the water use of these data centers to be quote-unquote 'protected.'"
Despite the promise of new jobs to a community, Frankel said the only increase in jobs is during construction. Once server farms are operational, he warned only a handful of workers will be permanently hired.
He added massive demand for water and power resources make data centers a poor long-term growth investment compared to traditional residential or commercial development.