Beverly Morris envisioned a tranquil retirement in 2016 when she settled into her rural Georgia home, a haven of trees and serenity.
That vision has since been disrupted.
Just 400 yards (366m) from her Fayette County property stands a sizable, windowless structure housing servers, cables, and a network of blinking lights.
It is a data center, one of many proliferating across small-town America and the globe, underpinning everything from online banking to AI tools like ChatGPT.
“I can’t live in my home with half of my home functioning and no water,” Ms. Morris lamented. “I can’t drink the water.”
She attributes the disruption of her private well, leading to excessive sediment buildup, to the construction of the center, owned by Meta (Facebook’s parent company). Ms. Morris now resorts to hauling water in buckets to flush her toilet.
Despite fixing the plumbing in her kitchen to regain water pressure, she says residue persists in the tap water.
“I’m afraid to drink the water, but I still cook with it and brush my teeth with it,” Morris stated. “Am I worried about it? Yes.”
Meta, however, refutes any connection.
In a statement to the BBC, Meta affirmed that “being a good neighbor is a priority.”
The company commissioned an independent groundwater study to address Morris’s concerns. The report concluded that its data center operation did “not adversely affect groundwater conditions in the area.”
Even as Meta challenges the link to Ms. Morris’s water issues, she believes the company has overstayed its welcome.
“This was my perfect spot,” she reflected. “But it isn’t anymore.”
While the “cloud” is often perceived as an intangible entity, its physical presence is undeniable.
The cloud resides in over 10,000 data centers globally, primarily located in the US, followed by the UK and Germany.
Fueled by the AI boom and the surge in online activity, this number is rapidly growing, leading to increased complaints from nearby residents.
The US expansion faces mounting local activism, with $64 billion (£47 billion) in projects delayed or blocked nationwide, according to a report by Data Center Watch.
Concerns extend beyond construction to water usage. Maintaining server temperatures requires substantial water resources.
“These are very hot processors,” Mark Mills of the National Center for Energy Analytics testified before Congress in April. “It takes a lot of water to cool them down.”
Many centers employ evaporative cooling systems, where water absorbs heat and evaporates, similar to the human body’s perspiration mechanism. On hot days, a single facility can consume millions of gallons.
One study estimates that AI-driven data centers could consume 1.7 trillion gallons of water globally by 2027.
Georgia exemplifies this tension as one of the fastest-growing data center markets in the US.
Its humid climate offers a natural and cost-effective cooling source, attracting developers. However, this abundance may come at a price.
Gordon Rogers, executive director of Flint Riverkeeper, guided us to a creek downstream from a new data center construction site by US firm Quality Technology Services (QTS).
George Diets, a local volunteer, collected a water sample in a clear plastic bag, noting its cloudy and brown appearance.
“It shouldn’t be that color,” he stated, suggesting sediment runoff and potential flocculants—chemicals used to bind soil and prevent erosion that can create sludge if released into the water system.
QTS maintains that its data centers adhere to strict environmental standards and generate millions in local tax revenue.
While construction is often managed by third-party contractors, local residents are left to cope with the repercussions.
“They shouldn’t be doing it,” Mr. Rogers asserted. “A larger, wealthier property owner does not have more property rights than a smaller, less wealthy property owner.”
Tech giants acknowledge these concerns and are taking steps to address them.
“Our goal is that by 2030, we’ll be putting more water back into the watersheds and communities where we’re operating data centers than we’re taking out,” stated Will Hewes, global water stewardship lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company with the largest global data center footprint.
He noted that AWS is investing in leak repairs, rainwater harvesting, and the use of treated wastewater for cooling. In Virginia, the company is collaborating with farmers to reduce nutrient pollution in Chesapeake Bay.
In South Africa and India, where AWS does not use water for cooling, the company is investing in water access and quality initiatives.
In the Americas, Mr. Hewes reported that water is used for cooling on approximately 10% of the hottest days each year.
Nevertheless, the cumulative impact is significant. A single AI query, such as a request to ChatGPT, can consume as much water as a small bottled water. Multiplied by billions of daily queries, the magnitude becomes evident.
Prof. Rajiv Garg, who teaches cloud computing at Emory University in Atlanta, asserted that data centers are here to stay, forming the backbone of modern life.
“There’s no turning back,” Prof. Garg stated.
However, a path forward exists, emphasizing long-term strategies: smarter cooling systems, rainwater harvesting, and more efficient infrastructure.
In the short term, data centers will create “a huge strain,” he acknowledged, but the industry is beginning to prioritize sustainability.
This offers little solace to homeowners like Beverly Morris, caught between her past idyllic vision and the infrastructure of the future.
Data centers have evolved beyond industry trends to become integral to national policy. President Donald Trump recently pledged to construct the largest AI infrastructure project in history, heralding “a future powered by American data.”
Back in Georgia, the intense sun and humidity highlight the state’s appeal to data center developers.
For local residents, the tech future is already present: loud, thirsty, and sometimes challenging to coexist with.
As AI expands, the central question remains: how to power the digital world of tomorrow without depleting the most essential resource—water.
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