Editor’s Note: The following article is written by Jackie Cruz, one of the Tribuno’s first interns and now writer and Iowa Correspondent.
Muscatine, Iowa is a historic town with a population of 29,708, located on the west side of the Mississippi River. My family and I are among the seven people included in that population who have lived here for almost a decade. It’s home to us. Long before my family moved here, Muscatine residents were accustomed to corporations in our backyard, like Big Agriculture and Big Pharma. A lawsuit was filed in 2012 and settled in 2018 against Grain Processing Corporation, alleging that it released toxic chemicals into the air.
So how can we be surprised when we hear that Big Tech is making itself a home in Muscatine? I remember reading about this on Facebook, like so many other residents, through a social media post in a community chat that shared this link. After reading this, I felt that our city council lacked transparency over this event, and I was not the only one who felt this way. Many of us left comments feeling enraged, disappointed, and curious as to why this was passed so easily. All of us are concerned with the effects that this will have on our community and our environment. Will we see an increase in our electricity and water bills? How can our city officials sneak this past us, and do they have our best interests at heart?
Due to the rapid development of technology over recent years, data centers have been built to support this growth and are particularly driven by artificial intelligence (AI). Data centers are physical facilities that organizations, companies, businesses, and corporations use to house their critical applications and data, much like Meta, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. Data centers are built with routers, switches, firewalls, storage systems, servers, and application-delivery controllers, which all require significant amounts of water for cooling and power for AI calculations. AI’s water usage can be divided into three main areas, for cooling purposes (evaporates about 0.26-2.4 gal per kWh), water-intensive electricity generation which is needed to power the data centers (2 gal per kWh), and the water consumption associated with AI supply chains, to produce a single microchip, it requires 2.1-2.6 gal of water to cool machinery and make sure it is free of contaminants.
Shaolei Ren, an associate professor at UC Riverside, has been studying the annual water use of cooling systems alongside other professors. They found that Google used about 5 billion gallons of fresh water for cooling in 2022, 20% more than in 2021, while Microsoft’s water usage rose by 34%. The International Energy Agency reported that in 2024, electricity consumption from data centers was estimated at around 415 terawatt hours (TWh), equivalent to 1.5% of global energy consumption. In 2024, the United States is one of the most significant regions for electricity consumption growth and has the highest per-capita data center consumption, at around 540 kWh.
Data centers are deliberately placed by tech companies, built in clusters on affordable land where tax breaks exist, with sufficient access to water and a reliable power supply. This means data centers are likely to be built where electricity is cheap, where renewable energy is available, and near large bodies of water. Even the desert is a possible option, as companies are inclined to use underground water supplies.
For example, in Phoenix, AZ, where it keeps getting hotter and drier every year, a Microsoft data center was built in 2019 that siphons water from the Colorado River despite Arizona currently experiencing a megadrought. One data center has turned into a cluster of five, with a total of 280 generators for a combined capacity of almost 80,000kW.
Documents (19:34) show that these data centers plan to use about 1.83 billion gallons of water per year. This is enough water for a city like Santa Cruz, CA, or roughly 61,000 people in the United States. Business Insider found that about 43% of current data centers are located in areas of high or extremely high water stress. A very significant finding, as many of these centers require large amounts of drinking water to cool their servers and prevent overheating. Many have also been built in highly populated counties such as Santa Clara County in California, Maricopa County in Arizona, and Northern Virginia, which is the most densely populated part of the Washington, DC, metro area. Counties will go so far as rezoning residential areas to allow data center structures to be built in neighborhoods. Prince William County, VA, passed a rezoning resolution in 2023 to allow this despite a local campaign from community members to challenge it.
It is insane to think that the race for powerful technology here in the U.S. can cause so much harm to our health and environment, but it is far more gruesome than we realize. Memphis, TN, for example, is facing an environmental crisis due to Elon Musk’s rapid development of xAI in 2023. Gas turbines emit three deadly pollutants (9:57-10:21), and the data center currently uses 35 gas turbines for power, burning enough methane to power a small city. As a result, residents who live near the data center are now at higher risk for asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, bronchitis, and formaldehyde causes cancer, and delicate particulate matter that creates airborne soot that can pass through the lungs and into our bloodstream, causing heart disease.
Community member Donna Gallant (2:43-5:13) has been outspoken about the lack of transparency from local government and companies. Residents are met with hesitancy and the excuse, “We signed an NDA.” Business Insider notes that many of these companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, do not want to disclose their information and have denied requests on the grounds of “trade secrets.” If they do disclose, it is often retracted, and key information is missing. As of now, there is no definitive public directory, no official map, or government agency to which to go. However, a public map has been referenced by major publications such as Wired and AP. A note that Iowa has 104 data centers listed on this map and I can only assume more are to come as the U.S. continues to expand it’s use of AI.
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