Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick dismissed concerns about artificial-intelligence data centers' water consumption this week, telling viewers that the facilities do not use water at all and calling the broader controversy propaganda spread by America's adversaries. Federal research says otherwise, and it arrives just as Congress moves to make data-center developers, not local families, pay for the water infrastructure the boom requires.
Lutnick's comments, delivered on CNBC on Wednesday and reported by Dailyhunt in its Thursday, Sept. 3 article, mark a sharp reversal from his own past statements. In an appearance roughly a year earlier, Lutnick acknowledged that AI facilities “suck water and they need water,” according to Wonderwall. This week he told a different story, arguing instead that cattle are the No. 1 product in America that uses water.
That claim doesn't hold up against the federal government's own numbers. Livestock watering accounts for less than 1% of total U.S. freshwater withdrawals, while thermoelectric power generation and crop irrigation make up the vast majority of national water usage.
What the Research Actually Shows
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that U.S. data centers directly consumed about 66 billion liters of water in 2023, a massive jump from the 21.2 billion liters they consumed in 2014, per the seed reporting. And that figure only covers what happens on-site. The lab's research found that the indirect water footprint of U.S. data centers, water evaporated at the power plants that supply their electricity, was 12 times larger in 2023 than their direct on-site cooling footprint, according to Latitude Media.
Industry groups do push back on some of the alarm. A data center coalition has said that some facilities rely on air cooling while others use water or hybrid systems, and a study out of Virginia found that 83% of data centers use as much water as or less than a large office building. But hyperscale facilities as a category could consume between 60 billion and 124 billion liters of water annually by 2028, the Dailyhunt report notes, and corporate disclosures back up the growth trend: Google withdrew 7.8 billion gallons of water globally in 2024, with total consumption rising more than 40% since 2021 as AI computing workloads expanded, according to the MOST Policy Initiative.
Congress Moves on Who Pays
The politics are moving fast. On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on draft legislation called the Water Cost Accountability Act, designed to force data-center developers rather than local families to cover municipal water system connections and infrastructure expansion costs, according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill is similar to the Ratepayer Protection Act. Separately, the Ratepayer Protection Pledge covers about 80% of U.S. electricity deliveries and requires participating companies to fund new power generation and grid upgrades rather than pass those costs to households.
The political coalition against unchecked AI buildout spans both parties. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation back in March calling for a national moratorium on new AI data center construction until federal environmental and public utility safeguards are enacted, per Lawfare. Ocasio-Cortez has also criticized President Donald Trump's defense of data centers, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has voiced similar criticism from the right, according to the seed reporting. Trump himself has urged communities to let data reign, warning that opponents of data centers could become backwards and poor.
Red States Are Pulling Back Too
Even Republican-led states that courted the AI boom are now hitting the brakes. Texas Governor Greg Abbott paused new data-center grid approvals in August, according to Axios. Investor Kevin O'Leary has separately urged data-center operators to be transparent about their water usage and emissions.
Local governments elsewhere are moving on their own timelines. Pierce County, Washington enacted an emergency one-year moratorium last month prohibiting permits for data centers exceeding 10 megawatts, as Hoodline previously reported. In Atlanta, proposed regulations would require closed-loop cooling, while bills would limit water use.
Loudoun Water records show that in August 2015 the Authority issued $117.2 million in Series 2015 Water and Sewer System Revenue and Refunding Bonds. PJM has been discussed in connection with Virginia's growing power demand and Northern Virginia data centers. Dominion Energy's 2024 Integrated Resource Plan, dated October 15, 2024, incorporates the utility's forecast of demand for electric generation.
Industry Is Already Adapting
Some developers aren't waiting for legislation to catch up. Edged US has a facility in Mesa, Arizona, using waterless cooling, though such closed-loop systems typically trade lower water usage for higher electricity demands. More broadly, data-center operators are adopting closed-loop and waterless cooling systems industry-wide, per the seed reporting, even as the federal government's own rhetoric on the underlying resource question keeps shifting.
