Congress Considers Amending Safe Drinking Water Act To Protect Communities From AI Data Center Costs

As communities raise concerns to Congress about the rising price of water for citizens in towns where data centers are located, operators say the artificial intelligence industry is being wrongly vilified over the amount of water the technological facilities use and whether they pollute.The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is considering amending the Safe Drinking Water Act — the main federal law regulating drinking water in America — in an effort to ensure that data centers cover their own water costs. That includes the costs of system upgrades required to handle the additional water and sewer needs.“Data centers can and should have positive impacts on local communities. They are major drivers of investment, economic growth, job creation, and the development of our nation’s digital infrastructure,” the subcommittee on the environment’s chairman, Congressman Gary Palmer, said at a hearing Thursday to consider a draft bill. “However, those benefits should not come at the expense of families and small businesses through higher water rates.”Committee Democrats blasted the Republican proposal as weak and inadequate because it would strip some funding for water systems to carry out upgrades. “People are sick and tired of corporate special interests and big tech billionaires taking over their neighborhoods and threatening their utility bills, their air, their water, and their property,” the committee’s ranking member, Frank Pallone, Jr., said. “And unfortunately, these very real concerns are repeatedly swept to the sidelines, minimized, or ridiculed by President Trump and even Republican congressional leaders,” he added.Mr. Pallone cited Mr. Trump’s Monday Truth Social post in which he said any community that does not want to see a new data center built is asking to be “backwards and poor.”But industry leaders say that data centers are just the latest target for criticism about exploitation of resources. On a recent podcast OpenAI’s chief executive officer, Sam Altman, argued that fears over AI’s water consumption are disproportionate to other industrial usage. He noted that it takes around the same amount of water to produce a single almond as it takes to answer 38,000 ChatGPT queries. People “scarfing down” a dozen almonds “don’t feel like they’re doing something horrible from a water perspective for the most part,” he said, acknowledging that early data centers did use evaporative cooling at one point, but now use about the same amount of water as an average office building. The Chamber of Commerce’s head of strategic advocacy, Neil Bradley, said data center construction is needed across the country, but rapid growth does not need to be a competing goal with community protection. “With the right policies, planning, and partnerships, the United States can build the digital infrastructure it needs while protecting local water systems, supporting affordability, and strengthening resilience,” Mr. Bradley said.Mr. Bradley, whose chamber supports the draft bill proposed by the Republican majority, said that technological innovations in recent years have been able to greatly improve water efficiency, and ongoing innovation and deployment of new technologies can improve the trend.“Industrial water reuse is one of the most promising tools available. Reuse can lower operating risk for businesses, reduce pressure on drinking water supplies, and help communities stretch existing resources further,” Mr. Bradley said. He suggested federal policy support wider deployment of reuse technologies, including through incentives that encourage businesses to invest in sustainable water practices.Approximately 50,000 individual drinking water systems are installed across America and many suffer from aging infrastructures that need upgrades. Vermont Agency of Natural Resources’ secretary, Julie Moore, told the committee that it is critical for small systems to have sufficient funding available to provide safe and affordable drinking water. That means large water users need to cover all of the costs they incur. “We support requiring owners and operators to help pay for the water infrastructure impacts they create, and the broader focus on source water vulnerability studies coordinated with states,” Ms. Moore said.No vote has been planned yet on the proposal.

Congress Considers Amending Safe Drinking Water Act To Protect Communities From AI Data Center Costs

Congress Considers Amending Safe Drinking Water Act To Protect Communities From AI Data Center Costs

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