Voters made it clear this week that they want to see limits put on data centers for artificial intelligence, passing 40 of 41 proposed ballot measures that would place restrictions on some of the more than 2,000 new facilities planned for communities around the nation. Water and power top the list of ratepayers’ concerns. But calculating how much each data center draws from local resources is an elusive task, with operators typically reporting usage figures companywide instead of site by site. Giant 1-gigawatt AI data centers from the likes of Meta, Google, Amazon and SpaceX can consume up to 10 million gallons of water per day, according to Shaolei Ren, a data center researcher and professor at University of California, Riverside. The exact number varies greatly depending on what type of hardware is inside a data center, where it’s built, and what method is used to cool the servers and the building as a whole.

Other data center water use and regulation news:

• Inside Climate News: Voters reject industry-backed ballot measures with big environmental stakes
• Las Vegas Review-Journal: Boulder City voters reject data centers in Southern Nevada ballot measure
• Wired: The results are in: Voters hate data centers
• CNET: Data center backers suffer near-total midterm defeats across the country
• Calexico Chronicle (Calif.): Food and Water Watch presents at DCAC meeting
• Bloomberg: Opinion: We need to learn to love the local data center