How Does the Location of AI Data Centers Affect Their Water Use, and How Can Wastewater Reuse Help Local Communities?

Artificial intelligence (AI) needs huge amounts of computing power, and most of this computing happens in large buildings called data centers (Mytton, 2022). When people talk about data centers, they usually focus on electricity and carbon emissions, but there is another important issue: water (Bloomberg News, 2025; Mytton, 2021). Data centers use water directly for cooling, and they also use water indirectly through the power plants that produce their electricity (Mytton, 2021). This is a serious problem when many new AI data centers are being built in dry regions that already suffer from water shortages (Bloomberg News, 2025; Siddik et al., 2021).

This paper looks at two main questions.

1. How does the geographic location of AI data centers affect how much water they use?
2. How can data centers reuse wastewater so that they reduce their impact and potentially provide benefits to surrounding communities?

To answer these questions, the paper reviews scientific articles, reports, and news stories about data center water use, government rules, and examples of wastewater reuse projects (Mytton, 2021; Siddik et al., 2021; Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP, 2026). The findings indicate that geographic location substantially influences total water use, with hot and dry regions powered by water-intensive electricity sources leading to much higher water use per unit of computing than cool and wet regions powered by renewable energy (Mytton, 2021; Lei et al., 2025). At the same time, case studies and pilot projects show that if data centers use treated wastewater instead of freshwater, and if they return some water or heat to cities, they can lower their footprint and even support local water and heating systems (Ebrahimi et al., 2014; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2026; World Economic Forum, 2024).