s AI-driven demand accelerates the buildout of hyperscale data centers across the United States, California is confronting a specific and underexamined dimension of the challenge: not just how much water these facilities consume, but where they are being sited, and who bears the consequences. A report published by nonpartisan think tank Next 10, authored by researchers at Santa Clara University, The Intersection of Data Center Development, Water Availability, and Environmental Justice in California provides the first comprehensive geospatial analysis of every known operating and planned data center in California, assessed through a combined water scarcity and social vulnerability lens.
Its findings are pointed. Until around 2020, data centers in California were almost exclusively located in established urban tech hubs — Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Sacramento. Since then, larger hyperscale facilities have been increasingly proposed and built in exurban and rural areas where water systems are smaller, groundwater-dependent, and less resilient. The report's Total Vulnerability Index, combining a newly developed Water Scarcity Index and Social Vulnerability Index, shows that newer and planned facilities score markedly higher on both dimensions than their predecessors.
Data center growth risks compounding existing inequities, but also presents an opportunity to build a more sustainable and inclusive model for digital infrastructure
The Central Valley and Imperial Valley emerge as the regions of greatest concern — the former subject to chronic groundwater depletion and contamination, the latter scoring the maximum 5.0 on water scarcity and almost entirely dependent on Colorado River imports already subject to mandatory reductions. As F. Noel Perry, Founder of Next 10, put it: "Without stronger safeguards, this growth risks compounding existing inequities — but with the right approach, it also presents an opportunity to build a more sustainable and inclusive model for digital infrastructure."
The data simply does not exist
The report's second major finding may be more consequential for water managers and regulators: the information needed to assess or plan for data center water demand is largely unavailable. For the vast majority of facilities mapped, researchers found no publicly accessible environmental planning documents, no cooling system information, and no data on water type or volume. Every water provider in every district where data centers are located was contacted directly — none provided figures on individual or cumulative facility water use.