NGWA is underscoring the critical role groundwater professionals play in helping communities manage water resources responsibly as data centers expand across the United States with the Association’s latest position paper and a three-part series in its monthly trade magazine, Water Well Journal.
The position paper notes that data center growth must be planned and managed in a manner that protects groundwater resources that are relied upon by communities and ecosystems. It adds that policymakers, regulators, and data center developers need to incorporate groundwater sustainability into siting, permitting, and operational decisions, including clear disclosure of water sources and use.
Finally, the position paper notes that the Association strongly supports the evaluation and use of geothermal systems and other low-water use solutions as scalable approaches that can significantly reduce or eliminate consumptive water use.
Water Well Journal addressed the subject in a three-part series titled “Data Centers and Groundwater” in its January, February, and March 2026 issues.
In the final installment and the cover story of the March 2026 issue, the article peers closer at the three different types of geothermal systems identified in Part 1 (conventional closed-loop geothermal systems, pump and injection systems, and submerged closed-loop heat exchangers) that can be the solution for data center cooling. The article then reviews the three types of geothermal systems and drilling methods needed to install them and the current and future market dynamics water demands.
The U.S. leads the world in data centers by a large margin with more than 5400 as of November 2025, making the ensuing years critical in addressing their water and power demands.
The annual water usage can vary from 110 million gallons for a midsize data center to 1.8 billion gallons for a larger hyperscale data center, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. The latter amount is comparable to the water use of a medium-sized town.
Looking ahead to 2028, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that total annual on-site water consumption could double — or even quadruple! — the 2023 level of 17 billion gallons nationally.
“There’s a real need for this technology,” said David Henrich, CWD/PI, CVCLD, president of Bergerson-Caswell Inc. in Maple Plain, Minnesota, and 2018 president of NGWA.
“Once people pick up the awareness piece and see that there are ways to do this without consuming groundwater or consuming any water resources, I think everybody would be pretty interested in a solution that solved this half of the data center resource puzzle.”
To further advance responsible practices, NGWA launched a Data Center Task Force of NGWA members late last year to focus on developing guidance for policymakers, utilities, communities, and data center developers.
The Task Force will work to address groundwater availability, transparency in water use, and best practices for siting and operating data centers in ways that protect long-term water resources. The Task Force developed the position paper in time for the 2026 NGWA Fly-In, which takes place March 24-25 in Washington, D.C.
The position paper and all three Water Well Journal articles can be found on a page of the NGWA webpage titled Issue: Data Centers and Groundwater.