Data centers continue to dominate headlines and social media in Virginia and beyond. And one new state law aims to help inform that discourse.
Among top complaints against the data center industry is the amount of water they use. So, Loudoun County Senator Kannan Srinivasan decided to do something about it.
“[Data centers asked me] Senator, why are we being singled out? Wineries, breweries, golf courses, a bunch of them, they use a ton of water," Srinivasan said of why the law was needed. "I said, ‘but they’re not growing. You’re the number one growth industry.”
The law requires local water authorities to report data center water usage. The numbers will be available on the Department of Environmental Quality's website, and it’ll be aggregated, comparing data centers versus some of the industries Srinivasan mentioned.
“We’re going to have credible numbers reported by the local utilities on a simple website anyone can access,” Srinivasan told Radio IQ.
Bentley Chan is Director of Public Utilities for Henrico County. He’ll be the one responsible for abiding by the new law, and he said it shouldn’t be that hard to track the water usage of the 11 data centers running in his region.
“We go out every other month and get the readings. If you see our vehicles drive by, we’re picking up all the meters and pulling all that information and bringing it back to the office," he said of the way the data is collected from data centers and all utility ratepayers. "We don’t have to like in previous times have to touch every meter."
"The data we’re collecting on the data centers is going back into the data centers?" I asked.
"It’s the way of the world,” he replied.
Chan said he’s not expecting much of an impact to existing services - or budgets - as they already report some data to the state regularly. Now he’s just waiting on guidance for how and when to report.
For their part, the data center industry points to state reports which suggest their water usage is less than 0.5 percent of total state withdrawals. They also say the expansion of new cooling management systems such as closed loop cooling systems and using reclaimed water have helped reduce water usage.
Srinivasan, meanwhile, expects the reporting website to be live January 1, 2027.
