Data centers are drinking more water, but overall water use in Virginia has gone down anyway. Here are the numbers.

Google’s annual environmental report lists the company’s water usage in two ways. There’s the conventional measure of how many million gallons per day, and then Google converts that into golf course equivalents.

The point: Data centers are thirsty, but so are golf courses; it’s just that people don’t get as worked up about them.

(Disclosure: Google is one of our donors to support our New River Valley expansion, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. You can become a donor and have no say, as well.)

A recent CBS News report, drawing on multiple government and business sources, put together a chart of the nation’s biggest water users. Data centers use about 17 billion gallons per day for cooling, but golf courses use 531 billion. The biggest source of water use is people watering their lawns — 2,900 billion gallons per day.

The Google data center coming to Botetourt County has stirred much controversy over how much water it will use — 1.2 million gallons per day is the latest projection, although the company has contracted for 2 million gallons per day. Google would be the Western Virginia Water Authority’s single biggest water user (the Coca-Cola bottling plant is currently the biggest at 260,000 gallons per day). For context, Google’s 2 million gallons per day figure appears to be about 3.65 golf courses on Google’s golf course scale. For more context, water use overall in the Roanoke Valley has dropped because of more water-efficient appliances. Google could turn on the tap tomorrow, use the full 2 million it’s contracted for, and the valley would still use less water than it did 20 years ago.

Comparing its coming Botetourt County data center complex to golf courses is convenient for Google’s public relations, but how does this project compare to other things? More broadly, what should we know about water use in general, be it in the Roanoke Valley or elsewhere? That leads us to another annual report, the annual water report from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Let’s wade into it.

Water use is going down

From 2019 to 2024 (the most recent data available), water withdrawals in Virginia (from either groundwater or surface water) have declined by 5%. That means we used 288.61 million gallons a day less in 2024 than in 2019. As astonishing as that is, that’s consistent with national data that shows water use declining as appliances (and industrial machinery) become more water-efficient. (The chart above doesn’t show the 5%; you have to do the math. The -3.08% is comparing 2024 with the average.)

The biggest single category of water use is for nuclear power plants

DEQ lists eight types of water usage. Of those, the single biggest one is for water for cooling nuclear power plants. Virginia has two nuclear power plants — in Louisa County and Surry County, both operated by Dominion Energy (which makes this an opportune time to disclose that Dominion is also one of our donors; same rules apply). The smallest is for commercial water use (keep in mind that many businesses might draw from a public water supply, and so would get counted as part of that). Golf courses, by the way, count as commercial, so while they may account for a lot of water nationally, they’re not dominating water usage in Virginia. Others, though, may have their own wells or surface water intake outside of a municipal water supply.

The biggest single reason for the drop in water use is the retirement of coal plants

In terms of changes from 2019 to 2024, water use declined in five of them. The biggest drop was in the category called “fossil power,” meaning water used in any kind of fossil fuel production. That drop coincided with the retirement of several coal-fired plants in Virginia, notably the last two units at Dominion’s Chesterfield Power Station.

In percentage terms, the increase in water for nuclear power was small — just 3.6% — but because nuclear-related water is such a big category, even a small percentage change led to a big increase in water usage:

The three categories that saw water use increase, as measured in millions of gallons per day:

Nuclear power: 137.16
Public water supplies: 44.63
Mining: 13.87

The five that saw water use decrease:

Fossil power: -467.19
Industrial: -7.78
Agriculture: -6.22
Irrigation: -1.93
Commercial: -0.84

Because of the way the accounting works, it’s impossible to say how much of the increase in public water was due to data centers and how much was due to an increase in population. With our household appliances becoming more water-efficient, it’s entirely possible that public water use might have decreased were it not for data centers — but we can’t prove that. At least not with these figures.

In any case, the overall result statewide was a drop in water usage, primarily due to the retirement of those coal plants. We think of their retirements primarily in terms of reducing carbon emissions (and, ultimately, coal-related jobs), but there are other side effects, as well — a reduction in water use being one of them.

The state’s biggest water users

The General Assembly’s research arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, estimated that data centers used about 2.1 billion gallons of water in Virginia in 2023, an 86% increase from 2019. That accounts for just 0.5% of the state’s total, but a review by the Center for Secure Water at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign notes that this distribution is uneven statewide. On the other hand, most water use is unevenly distributed because certain industries are more water-intensive than others. A more recent study by the pro-data center Taxpayers Protection Alliance estimates that data centers in Virginia use 1.4% of the state’s water. That’s higher than the JLARC number but also more up-to-date; it’s based on U.S. Geological Survey data.

I’m going to set aside public water systems and just look at corporate users that are listed individually in the DEQ report. These appear to be the state’s 10 biggest corporate water users. I say “appear” because I’ve had to cobble this list together from different parts of the DEQ report, which has them dispersed by category. Because of the way these numbers are put together, no individual data center will make that list because their use would get counted as part of a public water system — but don’t worry, I’m going to figure out a workaround below.

Here’s where we run into some data problems. These figures are from 2024, but the JLARC estimate on water usage was from the previous year, 2023 — and we know that data centers have grown every year. We don’t know what their total water usage was in 2024, but the year before, the state put it at 2.1 billion a year, which works out to 5.75 million gallons per day. That means data centers in total that year would have used less water than, say, the Coursey Springs Fish Cultural Station Bath County, which used 8.7 million gallons a day. (If you like trout more than you do terabytes, this probably seems a good use of water.)

We don’t know how much that figure has grown, but we have some hints.

The Virginia Mercury recently reported that localities in Virginia have committed to supplying Amazon data centers with 19.6 million gallons of water a day. If all those data centers (which are spread between Richmond and Northern Virginia) were a single complex, it would enter the list above at No. 9, just above the International Paper plant in Isle of Wight County — or, for our readers in the western part of the state, it would use about half the amount of water that the paper plant in Covington does.

Google’s biggest data center in the world (by water use) is in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It uses 4.78 million gallons a day, which would put it behind the Merck chemical plant in Rockingham County (6.0 million gallons a day).

Google’s Botetourt operation is contracted for 2 million gallons a day, although it’s more recently said it will use 1.2 million gallons a day (but said that someday it might ask for 8 million). What’s a good comparison with that draw, other than the golf courses that Google likes to use? The DEQ report provides us with some examples. That 2 million gallons a day is less than the 2.5 million gallons a day that the Laurel Hill Trout Farm in Highland County takes but more than the 1.3 million gallons a day used by Boxley Materials quarry in Blue Ridge, just across the Botetourt County line in Bedford County. On the other hand, if Google really does come in at 1.2 million gallons a day, it would be using less than the Boxley quarry. 

Why don’t we hear controversy about some of those water users? Likely because they’re already there and part of the background. Data centers are new. If someone were trying to build a paper mill today, with that kind of water use, I suspect it might be controversial as well.

If we want to go with Google’s proposed golf course equivalent, then the DEQ report offers a way to do that, too. Google’s Botetourt operation at 1.2 million gallons a day would be slightly more than Wintergreen (1.1 million gallons per day) and Colonial Williamsburg (1.0 million gallons per day), or about two and a half Massanutten resorts (0.5 million gallons per day). There’s a better comparison available, though, one that people in Botetourt County might be able to visualize better. Almost directly across the road from the Google site in the Greenfield Center business park is Ashley Plantation, a subdivision and golf course. DEQ says the Ashley Plantation Country Club uses 0.4 million gallons of water per day — so Google’s Botetourt complex can be measured as three Ashley Plantation golf courses. Or five, at the full contracted amount.

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