Nebraska wants data centers to come clean about water usage

Often seen as a black box of information, data centers in Nebraska will be forced to reveal more about their operations, like their annual water use and power demand, to the state, following the recent passing of a new law by the Nebraska Legislature. Jesse Bradley, director of the Department of Water, Energy, and Environment, said the state agency will then see what information gaps remain, but that the legislation is a “great start” and will help with future planning.

In addition to electricity production, water has emerged as a point of contention as companies look to build more data centers in Nebraska. Local residents, researchers, and regulators worry that new data centers could bring about water shortages in a state where water availability can vary widely and where wide swaths of this agricultural state are suffering through extreme drought. For now, the best available information about how much water data centers use comes directly from the data center companies themselves — if they choose to be transparent.

For instance, in Nebraska, there isn’t even an official count of how many data centers there are in the state. Of the ones that have reported their water usage, the amounts vary. Google’s Nebraska data centers consumed about 732 million gallons of water in 2025, according to the company. Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, expects its water consumption from data centers to grow. From 2020 to 2024, Meta’s 4 million-square-foot Sarpy County data center withdrew anywhere from 26.7 million gallons to 37.5 million gallons from the local water supply, depending on the year.

Data centers use water to cool the buildings and the computer servers inside. Keeping everything at optimal temperatures ensures the equipment doesn’t malfunction. Some cooling methods, like evaporative cooling systems, typically use large amounts of water. Air-cooled chiller systems, however, deploy a “closed loop” containing water, a chemical coolant, or sometimes both and can operate…