National Petition: Shut Down All Data Centers and Reclaim Our Water SupplyTo: The Federal Government, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Governors and Legislators of All 50 United States 

We, The People, demand the systematic decommissioning and total shutdown of industrial data center facilities across the United States to safeguard our finite freshwater ecosystems and uphold clean water as an inalienable human right.

The Problem: Systematic Ecological DevastationWater is the foundation of human survival, public health, and agriculture. The corporate expansion of data centers—accelerated by cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI)—has turned clean water into a commercial resource used to cool computer processors. We refuse to sacrifice our natural resources to sustain digital infrastructure.

Depletion of Vital Aquifers:

Across the nation, data centers directly withdraw billions of gallons of water annually. A single large facility can consume up to 5 million gallons of public water every single day—the equivalent daily usage of an entire town of 50,000 people. This mass exploitation drains local water tables, lowers residential well levels, and triggers severe water scarcity. [1] (https://www.facebook.com/RepGregLandsman/posts/data-centers-use-millions-of-gallons-of-water-every-day-and-thats-expected-to-dr/1108041855509207/ [2] (https://spacedaily.com/t-data-centre-five-million-gallons-water-stress/ [3] (https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-development-of-data-centers-ac25a1e6-a98d-4aa7-826e-1c1357330e51

Irreversible Water Loss: Evaporative cooling methods lose millions of gallons of water daily to evaporation. This water is removed from local community watersheds and ecosystems, permanently disrupting regional water cycles in areas already facing climate-induced droughts. [1] (https://www.wri.org/insights/us-data-center-growth-impacts [2] (https://mostpolicyinitiative.org/science-note/data-center-water-use/ [3] (https://spacedaily.com/t-data-centre-five-million-gallons-water-stress/ [4] (https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-development-of-data-centers-ac25a1e6-a98d-4aa7-826e-1c1357330e51

Chemical Contamination of Ecosystems: To maintain cooling loops, data centers frequently treat their water with dangerous chemical biocides “to prevent the growth of bacteria, mold, and algae,” alongside trace heavy metals that degrade from infrastructure into wastewater systems [Nature Forward]. This chemically altered, toxic runoff threatens surface and groundwater systems, risking the contamination of community drinking water.

Aggravating Urban Heat Islands: Recent research reveals that data centers act as massive heat polluters, emitting intense waste heat that raises surrounding neighborhood air temperatures by up to 4°F. This forced heating places additional stress on local water infrastructure and worsens human health risks in nearby communities. [1] (https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/data-centers-urban-heat-and-ai-growth [2] (https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/new-research-suggests-data-centers-have-an-alarming-and-overlooked-environmental/1072861731843739/

Our Demands:

Decommission and Shut Down Existing Facilities:

Establish a immediate national timeline to systematically shut down and dismantle operational data centers across all 50 states, returning stolen water rights back to municipal utility systems and local agriculture.

Revoke and Ban All Industrial Permits: 

Permanently ban the issuance of land-use, air-pollution, and water-withdrawal permits for any future data center construction or expansion. [1] (https://www.wbaltv.com/article/epa-proposal-leave-public-dark-data-center-plans/73605457

Mandate Complete Corporate Remediation: Force tech companies to fund the full environmental restoration of aquifers, rivers, and community water grids damaged or depleted by their infrastructure.

Prioritize Human and Ecological Needs: Enact federal protections ensuring that natural resources are legally preserved for human consumption, sanitation, and sustainable agriculture—never corporate tech infrastructure. Our water systems belong to the living ecosystems and human communities that depend on them. 

We urge you to sign this petition to demand a complete shutdown of data centers and protect the human right to water.