Data Centers: The Grid, The Ground, and the Future

By John Derewitz

The Tarrant Chronicle

While the low-frequency hum of cooling fans creates a visible and auditory battleground for suburban homeowners, a quieter crisis is unfolding beneath the surface across Tarrant County. It revolves around a resource far more precious in drought-prone Texas: drinking water.

To keep thousands of high-density silicon processors from overheating under heavy artificial intelligence workloads, data center facilities consume vast amounts of water. As hyperscale server campuses multiply across the region, local water authorities, environmental scientists, and community advocates warn that the industry's thirst could threaten long-term water security for millions of residents.

At the heart of the debate is how data centers maintain thermal control. Most conventional facilities rely on evaporative cooling towers—a process that sprays water across warm equipment coils, using heat absorption and atmospheric evaporation to chill server racks.

While evaporative cooling is energy-efficient for data center operators, its water consumption is staggering. A single large-scale data center campus can consume anywhere from 1.5 million to 5 million gallons of water per day—an amount equivalent to the daily residential water use of a small city.

"In a region where municipal water restrictions are a regular part of summer life, giving millions of gallons of treated drinking water to cooling towers every single day is unsustainable," says Cyrus Reed, Conservation Director for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. "We are taking potable water from lakes and rivers and literally evaporating it into thin air."

In Tarrant County, raw water supplies are managed by the Tarrant Regional Water District, which operates major reservoirs including Cedar Creek Lake, Richland-Chambers Reservoir, and Eagle Mountain Lake.

For TRWD, evaluating data center supply requests has become a high-stakes balancing act. "Before TRWD can evaluate whether additional volume can be served, applicants are required to demonstrate adequate justification for the volume requested and show how they plan to conserve water," the district noted in an official public statement regarding industrial requests. "If TRWD determines that a request cannot be met without compromising reliability to existing municipal customers, the request will be denied."

The tension boiled over at Cedar Creek Lake when developer Diode Ventures and the local municipal utility district requested a massive raw water allocation from TRWD to support a proposed multi-stage data center complex. Neighboring residents and lake community groups quickly organized under coalitions like Save Cedar Creek Lake, filling public hearings and voicing fear that drawing millions of gallons daily would depress lake levels during hot Texas summers.

Local leaders joined the fight. "The project's location was concerning because it would have sat right near developed subdivisions with hundreds of homes," noted Henderson County Commissioner Wendy Spivey, pointing out that lake levels were already low from scarce rainfall.

Under intense public scrutiny, strict evaluation criteria from TRWD staff, and explicit directives from Governor Greg Abbott requiring data centers to adopt water-efficient closed-loop systems, Diode Ventures formally withdrew its water supply request, halting the project. The withdrawal served as a major warning shot to hyperscalers attempting to secure raw water contracts without local consent.

To address public backlash over water depletion, some modern developers propose closed-loop liquid cooling systems or dry-cooling technology. These systems recirculate water or chemical coolants through sealed loops, cutting direct evaporation.

However, environmental advocates emphasize that closed-loop systems introduce a secondary threat: chemical water pollution.

Closed-loop systems require industrial chemical additives—including anti-corrosive agents, biocide treatments, glycol, and synthetic heat-transfer fluids—to prevent microbial growth and pipe corrosion. Environmental researchers raise concerns over the periodic "flushing" or blowdown of these systems. If flushed wastewater containing toxic additives or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS, or "forever chemicals") is discharged into municipal storm drains or local streams without specialized pre-treatment, it poses severe risks to regional watersheds and aquatic life.

Beyond direct on-site usage, data centers carry an even larger indirect water footprint: the water consumed by regional power plants generating the electricity to run them.

According to analysis by the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) and the Sierra Club, fossil fuel power plants in Texas consume tens of billions of gallons of water annually for steam generation and cooling. When data centers draw massive, continuous loads from the ERCOT grid, they force increased generation at thermal gas and coal plants—compounding regional water loss far beyond the physical boundaries of the facility.

As the Fort Worth Data Center & Infrastructure Commission prepares its formal policy recommendations for the City Council, water usage rules have become a central pillar of proposed municipal reform:

For Tarrant County families watching reservoir levels drop during Texas summers, the upcoming municipal votes represent a defining test: whether local leadership will safeguard the region’s drinking water or allow tech expansion to drain it.