How you look at something – the frame you use and your perspective – often influences what you see.
This holds true with the issue of data centers and water use. Amazon recently reported that it withdrew a total of 2.5 billion gallons of water for data center cooling operations in 2025. That seems like a lot of water.
But Amazon also points out that Americans used 3.3 trillion gallons of water that same year to grow their gardens and lawns.
The company apparently wants to assure you that the water it uses for its data center operations, in comparison to other uses of water across our very large country, is not such a big deal.
Of course, Amazon doesn’t operate its data centers across the entire nation. It does so in only a few states, and nowhere at higher concentration than in Virginia.
We wanted to learn for ourselves how much water local communities have promised to Amazon for data center cooling in our part of the state, the region between Northern Virginia and Richmond, including Louisa, Spotsylvania, Caroline and Stafford Counties.
By scouring available public records and submitting Freedom of Information Act requests, we learned that local governments in the commonwealth have allocated at least 19.6 million gallons a day to Amazon.
This, we think, is an underestimate. It doesn’t include at least one large water-cooled data center campus in another nearby county that might end up being leased and operated by Amazon, but is currently being constructed by another company. And it doesn’t include other potential Amazon data center campuses that have not yet been approved or are being held up in court.
Even so, 19.6 million gallons a day seems like a good deal of water. It’s enough to fill 980 backyard swimming pools every day. If the average American uses 82 gallons of water a day, it’s enough to sustain 239,000 people.
But Amazon tells us not to worry. The company has ambitious goals to become “water positive.” To Amazon, this means “replenishing more water to communities than we use in our direct operations.”
But being “water positive” depends on your scale of analysis.
For instance, Louisa County plans to provide seven million gallons a day to two separate Amazon data center campuses. Amazon is paying to construct the new water infrastructure that will make this possible.
On one hand, this is “new” water to Louisa County that wouldn’t otherwise be available for industrial use without Amazon’s funding. But from the perspective of the larger North Anna reservoir and river system, it still constitutes a withdrawal.
While Amazon is using raw water for its operations in Louisa County, in other localities the company is investing in extensive “purple pipe” systems that will capture water that would otherwise be sent downstream in order to circulate it to its data center campuses. The company is proud that it “works with utilities to collect treated wastewater, clean it to appropriate standards, and reuse it to save drinking water.”
Amazon doesn’t mention, however, that it will lose more than half of this water through evaporation as it cools its data center facilities, sending most of it up into the atmosphere. So something that appears to be water positive from the perspective of a community hosting an Amazon data center campus might also be a net water loss to a river system and to downstream users.
Even so, Amazon claims, it doesn’t use water to cool its operations throughout the whole year, only during the hottest days in Virginia.
A company spokesperson, for instance, marked up a water service agreement between Stafford County and Amazon we received from a FOIA request, in which the county promised to deliver more than five million gallons a day. The spokesperson wrote to us that, “actual annual use is much lower. Based on 10 years of data, the campus only needs cooling water about 4% of the year during the hottest months.”
The idea that Amazon is spending tens of millions of dollars to build a water system that it will only use for fifteen days out of the year strains credulity. Even if this is true, those are millions of gallons of water being diverted away from our rivers and streams during the peak of summer, when flows are the lowest and water is most needed.
It’s especially concerning when most of the state is in a severe drought, as we are now experiencing and may endure again in future years.
Beyond being Virginia’s leading data center company, Amazon has attained near- monopoly status as an online retailer and delivery service. It spends $19 million a year on lobbying alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It funneled almost $10 million to political campaigns in 2024 in order to influence elections, the same source reports.
Amazon, needless to say, also has a powerful public relations operation. It uses its economic and political power to avoid paying taxes that other companies and most individuals have to pay.
And in Virginia, the company and others in the data center industry are exempt from paying sales and use tax, which lawmakers say costs us nearly $2 billion annually. That exemption is the sticking point in ongoing budget negotiations; if legislators don’t finalize the spending plan by June 30, with or without the tax exemption, the state will experience its first government shutdown.
Amazon encourages us not to worry about all the water local governments are allocating to the company in central Virginia. It assures us that it is a good steward of this resource, and that it cares about sustainability.
But Amazon, just like any company with vested interests and a profit motive, doesn’t always share the complete picture. It frames the view it wants the public to see.
Given the massive size of this company and the ways it has abused its power in the past, Virginians would be wise to keep a watchful eye on how Amazon is using water. And as communities consider approving yet more data centers and additional water service agreements, Virginians may want to consider when enough is enough.
