Demand for Data Centers Threatens Water Resources Across Montana
As the speculative push for AI increases nationwide, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper is raising concerns about the growing presence of data centers in Montana and the threats these facilities pose to local water resources and existing energy infrastructure.
“Data centers in Montana are the perfect storm – they consume enormous quantities of water, competing with existing needs in basins that are already overallocated for water, all at a rapid pace and scale,” said Guy Alsentzer, Executive Director of Upper Missouri Waterkeeper. “Montana’s future depends on protecting our water from being drained for external markets. The rush to permit these facilities should instead be a rush to protect Montana’s consumers and our resources from permanent new impacts.”
The Costs of Data Centers in Montana
- Large data centers can consume 3-5 million gallons of water per day – equivalent to the needs of a town with up to 50,000 residents.
- Data centers pollute water resources with potentially dangerous groundwater reinjections, surface discharges, and new, additional energy on and/or off-site production.
- Even smaller data centers add up. Many withdrawals have significant cumulative impacts.
- Montana’s exempt well loophole allows industrial withdrawals and reinjection of up to 350 gallons per minute without a water right.
- Many rural areas lack zoning, leaving communities with little to no public input in the decision-making process. Only Missoula County has instituted a zoning ordinance that Communities across the country, rural and urban, are seeing quality of life issues with new industrial operations sited next to residential areas.
- Once established, data centers can rapidly scale up without additional oversight, public notice, nor government approvals.
- Skyrocketing demand for power would increase every Montanan’s electric bills and likely require new plants or major upgrades to existing infrastructure, which would pollute, exacerbating climate change and degrading water quality.
- Local taxpayers and ratepayers often foot the bill for infrastructure upgrades, while corporate profits leave the state.
Waterkeeper is extremely concerned with the use of exempt wells for thermal cooling. Montana law allows a 350-gallon-per-minute exemption, the equivalent of just over half a million gallons per day (504,000 gallons), without a water right. This enormous water withdrawal would compete with existing uses of water, and is particularly concerning after Waterkeeper defended senior water rights against exempt wells in the Horse Creek Hills case.
While there are many concerns with data centers at this scale, Waterkeeper is especially alarmed by the direct impacts to water from cooling operations, the egregious nature of the exemption, and the additional power demands that would increase utility rates and could require new industrial power production, adding pollution and using additional finite water resources. Such reallocations risk diverting water from existing uses, private property water rights holders, and connecting local supplies to external markets, potentially driving up costs and creating competition for limited water resources.
Waterkeeper is closely tracking a proposed 2 million-square-foot data center northeast of Great Falls, between Malmstrom Air Force Base and the Missouri River. The mega data center facility, which could demand 600 megawatts of electricity, is nearly equal to the power needs of 88% of all Montana homes for a year. This windowless mega data center poses a direct threat to water resources, including pollution, wasteful evaporative cooling directly consuming water, as well as water resources used in meeting the new, additional power demand.
While this data center is still in the proposal phase, Waterkeeper will continue to track this and other data centers across the basin to ensure they don’t exploit our public water resources, evade environmental oversight, permitting, and public notice, and will work to protect local communities from strained water supplies, infrastructure, and electrical costs shifted to taxpayers, and increased pollution.