Amid Statewide Drought Conditions, Data Centers Face Same Restrictions as All Water Customers

About one-third of the state of Virginia is under extreme drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and Gov. Abigail Spanberger is urging citizens to conserve water. So, when local water authorities implement restrictions on water use, are there specific carve-outs and rules for data centers, which use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to cool their computer systems?

No. Across multiple localities, they’re treated the same as all other commercial, industrial, and residential customers, state and local officials revealed.

The Department of Environmental Quality is responsible for permitting the groundwater withdrawal for public water authorities. Once that permit is granted, it is up to each authority to manage their water use and limit customers as needed, based on the weather conditions.

“Any of the permittees that are withdrawing are very cognizant of what they’re pulling out,”  Weedon Cloe, manager of the Office of Water Supply at DEQ, said. “They have limits, and those limits are baked in during specific times of the year to ensure that the resource is not depleted.”

There are provisions in the drought assessment and response plan that allow DEQ’s director to alter those permits in extreme circumstances. Cloe said that the department is reviewing those procedures, since the state is experiencing the worst drought they’ve seen in decades.

Virginia hasn’t been this dry since 2002, when the extreme conditions triggered new standards.

“The entire water supply program came (from) that drought. It was severe.
It was like a huge swath through the center of the state running north-south,” Cloe said.

There are three main stages of drought declared by DEQ that help localities decide which water restrictions to implement.

Under a drought watch, the state agency recommends localities minimize nonessential water use and to get a contingency plan in place.

In the drought warning category, officials recommend that local leaders start voluntary water restrictions and aggressively identify any leaks or repairs needed.

Once a drought emergency is declared, mandatory restrictions are put in place, and if water customers don’t curtail inessential water like irrigation, washing paved surfaces, or filling up pools, they could be fined.

Some places, like Henrico County, have not needed to venture into the mandatory category for their customers in two decades.

Bentley Chan, the director of Henrico’s Department of Public Utilities, said that of the eleven data centers in the county, only one makes it into the list of their top ten water users. Apartment complexes and hospitals are the biggest water consumers there, and they don’t have specific usage rules in times of drought.

“It’s not just on the residential customers (to restrict water use), and you’ll find that a lot of the industrial users have extraneous uses, such as irrigation, additional cleaning, and things of that nature,” Chan said. “And we do ask everybody to be a part of the mandatory restrictions … to preserve the flow in the James River.”

Similar policies are used in Loudoun and Fairfax counties that house over 200 data centers combined. In Fairfax, the county follows guidance from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments that requires all customers to implement reductions under the mandatory orders.

In Norfolk, there are no data centers online at this time that use water from their utilities, according to a utility representative. The representative went on to state that since they get their water from multiple sources, it is rare to have to implement restrictions.

“If there comes such a time (of data centers), the department would analyze the capacity versus the needs and factor in all conditions to ensure they’re able to adequately provide for all customers,” the representative said in a statement.

Western Virginia Water Authority provides water to 69,000 customers in the Roanoke area, where there are also no data centers online yet.  A representative told the Mercury that they are considering updating their policies once a data center is built, with one from Google expected to begin taking in water in 2028, which will be authorized to use up to 8 million gallons of water per day.

Some localities have started mandatory restrictions heading into the official start of summer, with precipitation totals for the rainy year, which begins in October, to be about eight inches short.

by Shannon Heckt, Virginia Mercury

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.