When walking the tree-lined streets of Palo Alto, California, one can only be amazed with the hypnotic beauty and wealth of modern day Silicon Valley. Nestled deep in the neighborhoods surrounding Stanford University lies the birthplace of the globe’s technological capital. A garage.
The Hewlett-Packard garage and home marks the birthplace of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, where David Packard and William Hewlett launched their company with the encouragement of Stanford’s Dean of Engineering, Frederick Terman, who urged his students to remain in California and create an emerging electronics industry rather than leave the state. The region did indeed boom, becoming the undisputed tech capital of the world. However, Silicon Valley’s reach has never been confined to the Bay Area. Its grasp stretches across the country and even the globe, as the industry seeks out the land, water, and energy resources needed to fuel a seemingly endless digital revolution.
The latest phase of this revolution has culminated in the rise of massive data centers. These sprawling facilities process, store, and cool the data driving cloud computing and artificial intelligence. While data centers are presented as an essential role in the growing digital economy, what is often hidden is their enormous appetite for water. Cooling thousands of servers demands millions of gallons daily, making proximity to reliable and affordable water just as important as energy. In the arid Southwest, drought has forced governments to limit water-intensive development, and tech companies are increasingly looking to water-rich regions like the Great Lakes where they can tap into abundant supplies with far less public scrutiny.
The Great Lakes region offers many enticements for data center development. Cooler Midwest temperatures and proximity to the Great Lakes reduce the need for energy-intensive cooling, which gives this region an edge over development in the water Southern states. While Columbus and Chicago have continued to be the region’s primary data center markets, companies are increasingly eyeing other secondary cities and rural regions where land is cheaper and energy is more available. These companies often plan their expansion and operate these massive data centers behind closed doors as they sign nondisclosure agreements with local municipalities to limit the public’s knowledge of energy and water use.
In Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, approximately seven miles away from Lake Michigan, Microsoft is planning to open a $3.3 billion data center in early 2026 on a nearly 1,900-acre campus. The first phase of Microsoft’s data center build will consume up to 450 megawatts of electricity, enough to power several hundred thousand homes. Similarly, Google is investing $1.7 billion into three Ohio data center campuses in Columbus, New Albany, and Lancaster, which builds on the already $2 billion the company has invested in the state since their first data center was built in 2019. Finally, Meta is expanding their massive $1 billion DeKalb, Illinois campus data center.
It is evident that these companies are expanding almost everywhere across the country. Some community’s residents have already begun to pay the price, such as Beverly and Jeff Morris in Newton County, Georgia. After Meta broke ground on a $750 million data center on the edge of the county, Mr. and Mrs. Morris’s taps went dry. The Morris’s home, which uses well water, is situated 1,000 feet from Meta’s new data center, and within a year of construction on the project, they lost access to most of their water supply. Their experience highlights how data centers can harm local wells, but Newton County is also on track to be in a water deficit by 2030, according to a report released last year. Water rates are set to increase by 33 percent, so that the local water authority can upgrade their facilities. This community’s residents will now have to pay the price for a project promised to bring them tax revenue, construction jobs, and a role in the digital future.
While the story of Silicon Valley began in a garage, its continuation depends on resource rich regions like the Great Lakes. If the world’s tech capital is to keep on thriving, it cannot treat the Great Lakes region and residents as expendable resources. The Great Lakes region holds over a fifth of the world’s surface freshwater, and that water is a balanced system and a one-time gift from the glaciers. There is too much at stake to let the region’s future be decided behind closed doors. If left unmonitored, the technologies that promise our future may drain the waters that are necessary to sustain it. At a minimum, mandatory reporting of water use by data centers, common regulatory requirements, and utilization of less water-intensive cooling solutions should be standard.
Freshwater Future thanks the author, Josh Heupel, for his policy contributions as a Yale Environmental Fellow and policy intern over the past year and a half. We wish him the best of luck as he begins his PhD studies at Stanford University.
