By Oliver Milman,Andrew Witherspoon
Publication Date: 2026-06-08 11:00:00
A record-breaking drought has hit large parts of the USA. But the artificial intelligence industry is still moving forward, with most planned data centers set to be built in drought-stricken locations, a Guardian analysis has found.
About two-thirds of future data centers, which typically require large amounts of water to operate, will be built in locations that were among the driest in the country last year.
Of the 809 planned data centers, 517 are located in locations where there was a drought last year. This is according to data from Cleanview and the federal government, which classifies the drought into four levels of severity. A similar proportion of existing data centers are already located in drought-affected areas.
More than 60% of the contiguous U.S. is currently in varying stages of drought, the largest spring drought in modern records, with the Southeast and West experiencing particularly severe lack of rain and snow, causing cropland to dry out and grow
