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Utilities Get Framework to Weigh Data Center Water Use

The guidance urges project-by-project review and cost-sharing deals, though it takes no position on whether data centers should be built.

Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Data Centers

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The American Water Works Association released guidance urging utilities to weigh data center water demand project by project, without taking a position on whether data centers should be built. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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The American Water Works Association (AWWA) released a report, Cooling the Cloud: Considerations for Water Utilities Evaluating Data Center Development, outlining how water utilities can assess the impacts of proposed data centers. The report is a guidance document, not a shipped product or regulation, and it takes no position for or against data center development.

Why it matters

As data center construction expands, water utilities face questions about supply reliability, infrastructure capacity and cost allocation. The report builds on AWWA's 2025 publication of the same series and frames the decision as a project-by-project evaluation.

The report is a guidance framework rather than a measured study, so it reports no benchmark figures. It lists the variables utilities should assess: cooling technology choice, average and peak water consumption, wastewater needs and expansion potential.

The players

American Water Works Association (AWWA)

The largest professional association for water utilities in the United States, publisher of the Cooling the Cloud report series on data centers and water.

Carollo Engineers

An engineering firm specializing in water and wastewater infrastructure that co-developed the new report with AWWA.

The details

The report asks utilities to weigh a data center's water needs against available supplies, existing infrastructure capacity, reuse options and environmental impacts before committing resources. It recommends evaluating each proposal individually rather than applying a single policy to all projects. Cooling, the central water use for data centers, is the focus of its assessment of cooling technologies and peak demand.

Timeline

  1. AWWA published its earlier Cooling the Cloud report in 2025.

  2. AWWA released the new considerations report on November 2, 2026.

The Tech Race

The report sits within a utility-sector effort to set terms for data center water use as operators seek sites across the United States. It extends AWWA's own 2025 work, moving from framing the issue to offering a project-level assessment method.

Utilities evaluating data center proposals may now use these criteria to request water demand and cost projections from developers. Residential customers could see effects on water rates if infrastructure costs are not covered by the developers, a risk the report aims to prevent.

The takeaway

Watch whether utilities adopt the report's call for disclosed water demand and rate-impact projections in their data center reviews. The 2025 and 2026 AWWA reports together will be the reference points for those assessments.

Further reading

For broader context on the infrastructure behind this debate, see Data Centers coverage of how facilities are sited and powered.

Source note: This article includes information reported by W.

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Should your community approve new data centers despite their water demands?