13 Questions to Ask Your Public Officials About the Water Footprint of a Locally Proposed Data Center or Carbon Capture and Storage Project
by Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director, and SEHN staff
Two emerging technologies, data centers and carbon capture and storage (CCS), require large amounts of energy and water. Fossil fuel energy production (coal or gas) generally uses a great deal of water and most data centers and CCS projects will be powered with fossil fuels. In addition, data centers typically also use water for cooling their vast arrays of electronic equipment.
If you hear of a data center or CCS project coming to your community, the focus of discussion will likely be its energy needs, including the financial impact on rate payers and/or the additional air pollutants emitted in the generation of this energy. These are crucial to address. However, the impact on local water resources, though substantial, might be less visible to decision-makers. And in both cases, transparency around water use is often hard to come by when evaluating project proposals. It is up to citizens to ask questions about possible harms to drinking water sources now and in the future.
Each project will have unique water impacts because the ecology, prevailing climate, pre-existing water demands, and existing laws that govern water use vary significantly between regions. Albuquerque, New Mexico and Minneapolis, Minnesota have vastly different water regimes, both ecological and legal.
Further, water use can sometimes be consumptive, meaning that the water that is withdrawn from a local source is redistributed out of the local watershed, as when groundwater used for evaporative cooling is extracted from a local aquifer, released into the atmosphere as vapor, is carried away by prevailing winds, and cannot be reused. Consumptive water use matters most in areas that are water scarce, but water withdrawals of all kinds, including from surface streams, can profoundly disturb the regional hydrology and can include, for example, impacts on recreational fishing, even in places where water is abundant.
The following questions are designed to serve as a checklist of key queries to ask policymakers, water managers, and corporations seeking permits to site water-guzzling or water-contaminating projects. The answers to these questions will help you put together an analysis of the perils of this project for other water users, for rate payers, and for the hydrology of your area. Pay special attention to the cumulative impacts on water of the project proposed for your community.
In some areas, water will be a limiting factor on siting and operating a data center or CCS project. For instance, Project Blue, a large data center in Tucson, was ultimately rejected by the city council because of how much water it would consume.
If you are unable to get answers to some of these questions, that is important information in its own right. Projects should not be authorized if the corporations and water decision-makers can’t or won’t provide the data. Big uncertainties in, say, how much water would be consumed in very hot weather, should bring a project to a halt.
Additional background information about data centers and CCS projects can be found here and here.
Questions to ask about water and large projects like data centers and carbon capture and storage:
Who has jurisdiction over water quality and water quantity for this project? State agencies? Municipal water authorities? The federal government?
Will any permits be necessary for this CCS project? Local, state, federal? If permits are required, what criteria will the applicant need to meet to get a permit? Is the information submitted publicly available?
What is the monetary value of the water that will be used for this project? How much is the industry paying for use of the water?
Will there be an accounting for the total water use for this project? Will there be gauges at the project that will provide accurate, real-time data, or will they rely on models?
How much water will this project use? Is this a fixed amount or is there a possibility of expanded operations in the future?
How will the water be used? And will it be recycled and subsequently be available for re-use as fresh, drinkable water, or will it be lost to the local community (as when groundwater is used for evaporative cooling or is discharged into a surface stream and carried away)?
Where will the water come from? (Aquifer? Lake? Reservoir? River?) If an aquifer, will the rate of water withdrawal exceed the rate of recharge from rain? Does the source of the water also serve as the source of drinking water or crop irrigation for the community? Could it serve as a source of drinking water in the future?
Will baseline levels of both water quantity and water quality be determined before the project begins?
Will any water from the project be discharged back into the environment from which it was taken?
Will chemicals be added to the water? If so, what are they? How will these additives impact the ecosystem if there is a spill, leak, or rupture?
Will this project heat the water? If so, will hot water be discharged directly into a waterway or will it be cooled first?
Who will be harmed if there is a water shortage? Individuals relying on private, rural wells? Communities hooked up to municipal water supplies? Agricultural operations? Other, pre-existing industrial operations?
What legal mechanisms will be used if the water is polluted by the project? A bond? Orders to stop the CCS operation or the data center?
What legal mechanisms will be used if there is a water shortage? Will the CCS operation be shut down?
Have the permitting authorities assessed the impact of the water use of this CCS project in the face of climate change and the higher temperatures and more extreme weather patterns— including periods of extended drought—that accompany climate change?