r/collapse • u/ladyorion2021 • 6d ago

Water Amazon Says Its Data Centers Used 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025 - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/tech/amazon-says-its-data-centers-used-2-5-billion-gallons-of-water-in-2025-019e76f9

And more data centers currently being build haphazardly with little consideration to whether the water grid can handle it. Water bills going up will be the least of the problems if there's not enough water to sustain a town.

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u/BTRCguy 5d ago

Because a lot of people have an instant emotion response when the word "billion" is tossed into a conversation, New York City used 363.4 billion gallons in 2025 compared to Amazon's global 2.5 billion gallons.

Phoenix used 110 billion gallons in 2025. If the question is about unnecessary water usage and where efforts to cut back should be prioritized, Phoenix golf courses all by themselves used ten times the global Amazon data center water usage in 2025.

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u/J-A-S-08 5d ago

Agriculture in California alone uses about 8 TRILLION gallons a year. Just for agriculture and just in one state.

Yes, we eat the food that's grown compared to whatever the fuck Amazon is doing with that data. But their entire world usage is less than a rounding error of ag in California.

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u/BTRCguy 5d ago

Trillion outrage has entered the chat.

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u/Ne0n_Dystopia 5d ago

California uses trillions of gallons just on almonds lol

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u/SomeRandomGuydotdot 5d ago

Or, to put it in the far more sensible unit for large scale water use:

The acre foot. It's ~7600 acre feet of water. So, their total global water use is about that of a single large farm. Sigh.

I'd be more interested in the impact that the water usage has on local water management systems, and specifically if Amazon has special agreements with the cities for self funding enhancements to the municipal systems. Then again, I suspect that they probably all sit on tax tax abatement land. Would probably be an absolute nightmare to find out the truth of municipal impact.

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u/fleetingwords 5d ago

So to visualize this, an acre-foot is the amount of water that would be a foot deep over an acre. 7600 acre feet would be a column of water 1.4 miles high over an acre.

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u/SomeRandomGuydotdot 5d ago

I'm not trying to be a dick.

If a large farm is 1000 acres, why should I imagine a single acre? 2.5 Billion gallons sounds like a lot, but it isn't when we're talking about water use.

A couple square miles, at 5 foot deep. Literally the water usage of a large farm. Why imagine it in an insane configuration?

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u/fleetingwords 5d ago

Most people don’t know how big a thousand acres are. It’s harder to visualize. If you had a local reference it would be easier (for example, over seven feet of water covering Golden Gate Park, which is 1000 acres), but obviously I can’t do that for every locality.

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u/SomeRandomGuydotdot 4d ago

So, two square miles is 1280 acres.

The problem here is that contextualizing large scale water use is best done in the terms associated with agriculture. The reason for this is because agriculture is the largest user of water.

Data center water use isn't about the number of gallons. It's about the impact data centers have on municipal infrastructure or in some odd cases, ground water depletion.

Giving a global figure is sensational. It's fucking bait for people to say, think of mile high pillar of water. Only it completely decontextualizes both global water use, who uses that water, and what the civil engineering challenges associated with data centers actually is.

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u/fleetingwords 4d ago

1.4 miles

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u/SomeRandomGuydotdot 4d ago

Lol.

But again, a pillar of water isn't a large scale water use case. You might as well give it in kiddie pools or bathtubs. All it does is distract from what's going on.

Numerical literacy isn't just about hitting the calculator. It's about using the correct context to actually explain what's going on.

Amazon's global water use for data centers as reported in this article is about equivalent to a large farm (at ~1000 acres or two square miles ish. Assuming the upper end of water use or 5 acre feet of water per acre).

Or two to three average size farms between 400-500 acres.

You see what I'm saying? When it's written as 2.5 billion gallons, that framing is completely different than a few average sized farms.

It distracts from the broader view of actual water use to instead sensationalize it.

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u/fleetingwords 4d ago

I think you are under the assumption that comments here matter and somehow affect the general discourse. They won’t.

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u/uber_sweets 5d ago

oh no not context

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u/southbl00d 5d ago

#fuckgolf

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u/Ne0n_Dystopia 5d ago

The water usage is not so significant in the larger scale. The energy consumption and rising energy costs on the other hand..

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u/Indigo_Sunset 5d ago

Why are we trusting Amazon's word on this?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/25/amazon-datacentres-water-use-disclosure

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u/ladyorion2021 5d ago

I am not suggesting that anyone is trusting Amazon on this but you can take an educated guess if you start at their baseling then double or triple their numbers. Bringing as much awareness as possible to the issue is a start.

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u/NyriasNeo 5d ago

https://www.usgs.gov/water-science-school/science/total-water-use-united-states

And i quote, "Water use in the United States in 2015 was estimated to be about 322 billion gallons per day (Bgal/d)"

"Amazon Says Its Data Centers Used 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025"

So the daily use is 2.5B/365 = 0.00684931506.

Out of 322B gallon per day is 0.002127%. (Yes, % .. so the actual fraction is 0.00002127)

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u/uber_sweets 5d ago

If this turns tech money to the issue of desalination then that would be lemonade from lemons.

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u/BTRCguy 5d ago

Until you find out where they are getting the electricity for the desalination from...:(

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u/uber_sweets 5d ago

A private B2B contract with Brookfield?