By Ken Silverstein
Publication Date: 2026-01-11 15:15:00
The water cooling system is seen on a Lenovo server at the Digital Realty Innovation Lab (DRIL) data center in Ashburn, Virginia, on November 12, 2025. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
The fastest-growing part of America’s artificial intelligence infrastructure is colliding with one of its most limited local resources: water.
As utilities, state regulators and local governments rush to address the surge in data center construction driven by AI and cloud computing, water is becoming a problem that few permitting systems are designed to address. The problem is not that data centers are unexpected. It is that they have crossed a threshold of scale – and yet are still regulated as if they were ordinary real estate projects and not nationally strategic infrastructure.
The US Department of Energy notes that planning for these facilities requires coordination beyond the local level. In many jurisdictions, data centers…