In June 2022, the National Security Agency’s Utah Data Center in the West Desert reported using more than 23.5 million gallons of freshwater. That is more than 35 times the amount of water used to fill the swimming pool at the Paris Olympics — all in one month. The data center is just one of roughly two dozen in the Great Salt Lake Basin, which has become a popular area to build data centers due to the region’s cheap water and business-friendly policies.
These data centers are hungry for power and thirsty for water, and are contributing to a broader regional problem: The lake is being sucked dry. In November 2022, the Great Salt Lake reached its lowest level ever, surpassing the record set just one year earlier.
The collapse of the Great Salt Lake would devastate local brine shrimp populations, which would wreak havoc on 10 million migratory birds that feed on them. It could cost $1.7 to $2.2 billion per year, in a place which has a population on track to grow 66% by 2060. It would decimate the local recreation industry. It could also expose millions to toxic arsenic-laced dust in the lakebed.
To help preserve the Great Salt Lake, Utah needs to require that data centers publish water usage data. Regulators currently do not understand how much water is being used in this sector, making it almost impossible to set conservation targets and policies to encourage data centers run by private companies and government agencies to reduce water usage. Publicizing this information will hold parent tech companies and data center developers accountable to their sustainability goals and the broader community, while allowing greater oversight.
Most companies do not share water data willingly — they historically have made it difficult to get actionable environmental impact information. Frequently, such information is provided in press releases or other materials that can be misleading or too general. Some companies go further. Meta (which has a data center in Eagle Mountain) has an agreement that the city must notify it of requests for water use data, and that the company has the right to contest requests as sharing “Confidential Business Information.” In other words, Meta has a say in who gets to see its records.This lack of transparency is deeply problematic given the sheer volume of water data centers are using. Water usage looms large among data centers’ climate impacts, and artificial intelligence is only intensifying these problems. Our team at the Aspen Institute spent two months submitting GRAMA requests to retrieve some of these water data ourselves. Through this investigation, we’ve gleaned critical information that would help the state regulate data center water usage. We’ve found that some data centers are much better at conserving water than others, likely because of more efficient data center infrastructure. For example, Aligned, a data center in West Jordan, reported using 5,704,000 gallons from June 15, 2022 to July 19, 2022, while Novva, a data center also in West Jordan, reported using just 35,000 gallons of water over a similar time period — even though Novva has a much higher power capacity. Typically, such significant variations in data centers’ water consumption are based on size, compute capacity, cooling technology and season.
Disclosing these water consumption data is a critical step to the sustainability of data centers, and that of the tech sector overall. Transparent data, for example, will enable the Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner — a new office established in 2023 with a mandate to establish and oversee the implementation of a strategic plan for the lake’s long-term health — to set tech-sector specific water conservation targets to hold data centers accountable for doing their part to preserve the Great Salt Lake. Requiring water data disclosures will also enable the state to experiment with new solutions to reduce water consumption such as retrofitting incentives, and to assess the effectiveness of these measures.
Requiring disclosure of water consumption would follow in the footsteps of other jurisdictions that have mandated similar measures. The European Union, for example, requires that companies disclose information on water use and water resources. Buildings over a certain size in New York City are also required to disclose water use information.
Once these data are available, the state can focus on supporting the tech industry’s sustainability efforts on the Silicon Slopes. Further publicizing the data has an additional benefit: it would also enable the public to evaluate for itself the trade-offs data centers bring to the region, and whether industry claims to environmental stewardship are sincere.
The timing could not be better. In early December, the Bureau of Reclamation and the State of Utah announced a combined investment of $100 million dollars going to preserve the Great Salt Lake. With most of the funding flowing through the Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner, we hope the state will prioritize understanding and regulating the tech sector’s water consumption at this critical moment for the lake.
(Mary-Clare Bosco) Mary-Clare Bosco is a Product Manager in Climate Tech at Routeware Inc.
Mary-Clare Bosco is a product manager in climate technology at Routeware Inc., where she manages the Program Tracker, a software tool for environmental compliance and sustainability data management. She is also an Aspen Policy Academy Science and Technology Policy Fellow and returning Salt Lake City resident.
(Jonathan Gilmour) Jonathan Gilmour is a data scientist and software engineer focused on solutions and policies to combat the climate crisis.
Jonathan Gilmour is a data scientist and software engineer focused on solutions and policies to combat the climate crisis. He works at the intersection of climate and public health as a data scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is an Aspen Policy Academy Science and Technology Policy Fellow.
(Rebecca Kilberg) Rebecca Kilberg is an Aspen Policy Academy Science and Technology Policy Fellow.
Rebecca Kilberg, an Aspen Policy Academy Science and Technology Policy Fellow, is a software developer and researcher with a background in government service delivery. Her work focuses on elucidating the environmental impact of digital infrastructure.
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