Georgia is reportedly struggling to meet the growing water demands of AI data centers, as Atlanta planners urge operators to prioritize community needs and reduce consumption — even as water usage varies widely across facilities.
“There’s no easy answer for how much water data centers are requesting,” Celine Benoit, principal planner for the Atlanta Regional Commission and Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, said, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Benoit, who was speaking at a conference hosted by the American Water Works Association on Monday, added that Georgia residents are unfamiliar with AI data centers and oppose them based on the facilities’ water and energy demands.
Georgia, which is prone to droughts, is one of the areas of the U.S. where data centers are being quickly developed, with the Atlanta area being the second largest data center market in the Unites States as measured by megawatts of power usage.
Proposed AI data centers need water ranging anywhere from 5,000 gallons to 9 million gallons per day, depending on the cooling system, as well as other factors, Benoit noted.
As drought continues to lay waste to the state, local Georgia utilities have pushed back against data center developers’ requests for massive water usage, saying they simply don’t have enough supply to provide millions of gallons per day, she added.
Breitbart News previously reported that a Georgia data center used 30 million gallons of water without paying for it:
The situation came to light after homeowners in Annelise Park, an affluent neighborhood in Fayetteville, Georgia, began experiencing unusually weak water pressure. When Fayette County utility officials investigated the complaints, they uncovered two industrial-scale water connections serving a data center campus located about 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, while the other was not tied to the company’s billing account.
The facility’s developer, Quality Technology Services, had used almost 30 million gallons of unaccounted-for water, equivalent to 44 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This volume substantially exceeded the peak usage limit established during the data center’s approval process. The Fayette County water system detailed the charges in a May 15, 2025 letter to QTS, demanding $147,474 in retroactive payments.
Opponents of AI data center construction have also blocked or delayed a record number of projects worth nearly $130 billion so far this year, according to a recent study.
Earlier this month, country music star Brad Paisley called on citizens to block the proposed construction of an AI data center that is planned to be built 50 yards from the Nashville Zoo, calling it “an absolute nightmare scenario,” adding, “It would be an enormous monstrosity.”
Silicon Valley’s relentless growth into middle America to build AI data centers brings with it serious side effects for their unsuspecting neighbors as well as intense pressure on state and local governments. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.