(The Center Square) – Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jamie Davis is urging a halt to new data center construction in Louisiana, worrying that too little is known about the water consumption needed to cool the massive complexes.
Davis, who is running against Republican Julia Letlow in the Nov. 3 general election, told The Center Square that Louisiana should stop approving new data centers until policymakers know more about their environmental and water impacts.
“I would like to see just a moratorium on data centers being built, period, until we know more about how they affect Mother Earth,” Davis said in an exclusive interview. His primary concern is water.
The data centers flocking to Louisiana “draw water right out of our drinking water aquifers,” Davis said. “And I don’t think you play around with your drinking water aquifers. I think they should find another source of water to use in order to cool the data centers.”
Meta says its Richland Parish data center will use 100% non-potable water for cooling, drawn from a non-potable aquifer rather than community drinking water systems.
Originally, Meta projected its Richland Parish facility would use 500 million to 600 million gallons of water a year, but the project has since grown from a 2-gigawatt facility to a 5-gigawatt facility.
Meta has not publicly provided an updated projection for how much water the expanded facility will use. Not even the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy is aware of Meta’s projections and told The Center Square there are no laws requiring the company to disclose that data.
“The state law right now does not require them to disclose anything,” Secretary Dustin Davidson said of water consumption for data centers. “My hands are tied.”
Meta told The Center Square that the Richland Parish facility will use a closed-loop cooling system that requires no water for cooling during the majority of the year. The company said it discloses water withdrawals for its facilities annually and will report Richland Parish’s withdrawals once the facility is operational.
Meta also said it plans to restore more than 1 billion gallons of water each year to local watersheds through company-funded restoration projects.
Davis continued to defend Meta, which has committed hundreds of millions toward water resources and infrastructure, and added that Meta “is not hiding anything from us at all.”
“Meta has been very forthcoming with information. They’re very communicative with us,” Davis said.
Water and electricity consumption for data centers has commanded attention across the country, fueling controversy around an industry that supporters have compared to the railroads in its potential economic significance.
A September report from the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy found that wells associated with Meta’s Hyperion project in Richland Parish are registered to pump as much as 23 million gallons per day from the Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer.
The same report found Amazon’s northwest Louisiana campuses are expected to rely on municipal water, while public water-use information remained unavailable for Applied Digital’s Rapides Parish development.
Over in West Feliciana, Hut 8 is paying $16 million to upgrade the parish water infrastructure and will also use a closed-loop cooling system. Parish President Kenny Havard commended Hut 8 on its collaboration with the parish.
“We knew the water was a big issue,” Havard said. “Without them doing the closed system, this project would have never happened.”
