Towns along the Mississippi River are already living with drought and rising heat. Now many of them are being asked to hand over millions of gallons of their water, every single day, to cool artificial intelligence (AI) data centers built by some of the largest tech companies in the world. A single large data center can use around 5 million gallons of water a day for cooling, roughly what a town of 10,000 people uses. According to Blytheville, Arkansas Mayor Melisa Logan, three out of every four member cities in the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative (MRCTI), a coalition of nearly 200 river communities, have already been approached about hosting this kind of infrastructure.

Mayors from 10 states are done waiting for someone else to protect their water. They're calling for laws like the one Missouri passed in 2025, which requires a permit before water can be pulled from the state and shipped more than 30 miles away. Mississippi state Sen. Derrick Simmons is preparing to introduce a similar bill, and lawmakers in Louisiana and Minnesota have committed to doing the same. The longer-term goal is a Mississippi River Compact, a binding agreement between states modeled on the one that has protected the Great Lakes since 2008, and eventually federal recognition from Congress.

"As droughts persist and intense heat expands, the need to secure our water resources will only become more acute," Simmons said, according to Mississippi Today.

River communities shouldn't have to choose between their water supply and a data center contract. Sign the petition to demand state legislatures and Congress pass water export protections and a Mississippi River Compact before more towns run dry.