Data Center Water
Amazon Reports 2.5 Billion Gallons Water Use by Data Centers Amid Rising Public Scrutiny
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Key Points
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Amazon said the 2.5 billion gallons (about 9.46 billion litres) it used in 2025 is “about 5%” of the water consumed annually by metro Seattle. (A figure it used to frame the scale of the impact.)
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Amazon also disclosed that “between 2024 and 2025 [it] decreased its total water withdrawal despite increasing data center capacity,” which the article notes bucks the industry trend of generally rising water use over the last five years.
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On public sentiment, Axios cited Gallup polling released in May showing “roughly 70% of Americans oppose building data centers in their communities,” with “water use for cooling and other environmental concerns” the top reason.
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Axios reported that Amazon’s chief sustainability officer Kara Hurst said, “There is a perception, perhaps, that the data centers are taking more water than people understand” and argued it’s “incredibly important that we are transparent,” adding that the industry should pursue a “race to the top.”
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GeekWire provided operational detail on how AWS reduces water use: it uses fans (outside air) for about “90% of the time,” switching to evaporative cooling when outside temperatures exceed roughly “85 degrees,” and it also says it gained water savings by researching the maximum temperatures electronics can tolerate and running machines under warmer conditions.
Amazon's global data centers used about 2.5 billion gallons of water in 2025 — roughly 5% of what metro Seattle consumes in a year — the company disclosed in its annual sustainability report MarketScreener. Despite rapidly expanding its AI computing capacity, Amazon says it actually cut total water use by 2% compared to 2024, bucking an industry trend of rising consumption.
The announcement lands at a politically charged moment. Just two days before Amazon's disclosure, Seattle's City Council unanimously passed a one-year moratorium on large new data centers, and a Gallup poll from May found that roughly 70% of Americans oppose building data centers in their communities, with water use cited as the top concern Trellis.
How Amazon Says It Cut Water Use While Growing
Amazon's secret weapon is heat tolerance. AWS uses fans and outside air to cool its servers about 90% of the time Trellis. Water-based evaporative cooling only kicks in when outside temperatures climb past roughly 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The company also studied the maximum temperatures its electronics can handle, then pushed servers to run hotter — meaning less water is needed to keep them cool.
The result is a Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) score — the liters of water used per kilowatt-hour of energy — of just 0.12, compared to an industry average of 0.84 GuruFocus. Amazon claims that makes it seven times more efficient than the typical data center. The company also says it has returned roughly three gallons for every four it withdrew in 2025, putting it 75% of the way to its goal of being "water positive" by 2030.
Seattle Leads a Wave of Municipal Pushback
On June 9, Seattle's City Council passed Council Bill 121214, a one-year emergency pause on data centers drawing more than 20 Megavolt-Amperes of power. Councilmember Eddie Lin, who sponsored the bill, argued that residents "should not be subsidizing record profits" for AI companies while facing higher utility bills and potential pollution. Mayor Katie Wilson framed the pause as a chance to figure out whether data centers are a "good use of urban land."
The political pressure is real. Five proposed Seattle-area data center projects sought a combined 369 megawatts — roughly one-third of the city's daily electricity capacity. Cities including Denver, Baltimore, and Atlanta have enacted similar pauses Trellis. The Gallup poll found that 48% of Americans "strongly" oppose local data center builds, a level of opposition now higher than resistance to nuclear power plants.
Amazon Pushes Transparency, Critics Want More Detail
Amazon's chief sustainability officer Kara Hurst said the company needs to be more open. "There is a perception, perhaps, that the data centers are taking more water than people understand," she said, calling transparency "incredibly important" and urging the industry toward a "race to the top" MarketScreener. AWS VP Kerry Person also pushed back on what he called "press narratives" that the industry is "consuming all the water in the world."
Critics say Amazon still falls short. Google reports water usage for every individual municipality it operates in. Amazon only discloses global totals Trellis. Researchers like geospatial analyst Simon Hans Edasi warn that a replenishment project far from a stressed site — such as Amazon's planned $4.8 billion Burbank campus in an arid region — does little for a local farmer whose well runs dry. Community impacts, critics argue, cannot be captured by a single global number.
The Bigger Picture: AI Boom Meets Resource Limits
The water debate is really an AI capacity debate. Research suggests a single ChatGPT query uses roughly 10 times the energy of a standard Google search. As AI workloads surge, data centers are expanding into water-stressed regions. In Eastern Washington, operators are moving into basins where replenishment is already strained, raising serious concerns for local agriculture and residential water supplies Trellis.
Amazon is trying to get ahead of the problem. It now runs 31 on-site water treatment facilities and holds 13 utility contracts for reclaimed water — treated wastewater that sidesteps drinking water supplies entirely GuruFocus. Whether those steps satisfy a public that is 70% opposed to new data center construction remains the central question the industry faces heading into 2026.
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