Say NO to a data center in Waterloo, Iowa
Say NO to a data center in Waterloo, Iowa
The Issue
Just a medium-sized data center requires 500,000 gallons of water per day to maintain it. Larger ones can use up to 5 million gallons, and that's just for one facility. Imagine the strain on our local resources! Your water quality will deteriorate, and your electric bills will begin to rise as these facilities take up more energy.
The proposed data center in Waterloo, Iowa, is a cause for concern. While technological advancement is crucial, it shouldn't come at the cost of our community's well-being and environment. Water is a precious resource, and in Iowa, where agriculture thrives, it is even more vital. Excessive water usage by a data center takes directly away from households and farms that depend on this resource.
Waterloo's infrastructure is not equipped to handle the demands of such massive water consumption without impacting quality and availability for residents. Additionally, powering these data centers requires a significant amount of electricity, leading to increased energy costs for local families. As we strive for sustainability, choosing to approve a data center that drains our key resources is counterproductive.
As was mentioned before, a medium-sized data center requires 500,000 gallons of water per day to cool the data chips, and per year, that adds up to roughly 110 million gallons every year. That's equivalent to the water usage of 1,000 households. Larger data centers can use up to 1.8 BILLION gallons annually, or the equivalent to a town of up to 50,000 people. Now multiply that by the number of data centers in the US, which is over 4000 operational nationwide.
On Earth, only 0.5% of all water is safe for human consumption. You may think it's more than that, or that you can always just go to the grocery store to buy more water. That may not be true anymore within your lifetime. Unless we make data centers more water-efficient, we cannot allow them to drink up all of our fresh drinking water.
Conserve now for a better future.
Sources:
Yañez-Barnuevo, M. (2025, June 25). Data centers and water consumption. Eesi.org. https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption
Walker, C., & Goldsmith, I. (2026, February 17). From energy use to air quality, the many ways data centers affect US communities. World Resources Institute. https://www.wri.org/insights/us-data-center-growth-impacts
The Issue
Just a medium-sized data center requires 500,000 gallons of water per day to maintain it. Larger ones can use up to 5 million gallons, and that's just for one facility. Imagine the strain on our local resources! Your water quality will deteriorate, and your electric bills will begin to rise as these facilities take up more energy.
The proposed data center in Waterloo, Iowa, is a cause for concern. While technological advancement is crucial, it shouldn't come at the cost of our community's well-being and environment. Water is a precious resource, and in Iowa, where agriculture thrives, it is even more vital. Excessive water usage by a data center takes directly away from households and farms that depend on this resource.
Waterloo's infrastructure is not equipped to handle the demands of such massive water consumption without impacting quality and availability for residents. Additionally, powering these data centers requires a significant amount of electricity, leading to increased energy costs for local families. As we strive for sustainability, choosing to approve a data center that drains our key resources is counterproductive.
As was mentioned before, a medium-sized data center requires 500,000 gallons of water per day to cool the data chips, and per year, that adds up to roughly 110 million gallons every year. That's equivalent to the water usage of 1,000 households. Larger data centers can use up to 1.8 BILLION gallons annually, or the equivalent to a town of up to 50,000 people. Now multiply that by the number of data centers in the US, which is over 4000 operational nationwide.
On Earth, only 0.5% of all water is safe for human consumption. You may think it's more than that, or that you can always just go to the grocery store to buy more water. That may not be true anymore within your lifetime. Unless we make data centers more water-efficient, we cannot allow them to drink up all of our fresh drinking water.
Conserve now for a better future.
Sources:
Yañez-Barnuevo, M. (2025, June 25). Data centers and water consumption. Eesi.org. https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption
Walker, C., & Goldsmith, I. (2026, February 17). From energy use to air quality, the many ways data centers affect US communities. World Resources Institute. https://www.wri.org/insights/us-data-center-growth-impacts
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Petition created on May 27, 2026