A Georgia Data Center Secretly Drank 29 Million Gallons of Water — Officials Refused to Fine It

The Data Center That Drank 29 Million Gallons in Secret

For 15 months, a massive AI data center construction project in Georgia pulled water it was not authorized to use. The total: 29 million gallons. Nobody in authority caught it. The people who caught it were residents wondering why their water pressure had dropped.

How It Surfaced

The facility — a QTS project spanning 6.2 million square feet — had been quietly consuming water during construction. The unauthorized draw went undetected by officials and was only discovered after locals began filing complaints about low water pressure, reported by Tom's Hardware on May 10, 2026. The volume is staggering for an unpermitted use: 29 million gallons is enough to supply hundreds of households for a year.

The Non-Punishment

What happened next is the part that documents the cover-up culture around the data center boom. Officials declined to fine the builders. The stated reasoning, per the reporting, was that the facility was 'our largest customer, and we have to be partners.' In other words, the entity that quietly took 29 million gallons was too economically important to penalize.

The Bigger Picture

This is the ground-level reality of the AI infrastructure gold rush: enormous facilities land in water-stressed communities, consume resources at industrial scale, and are shielded by the same local governments that should be regulating them. By the time anyone noticed, 29 million gallons were already gone, and the answer to accountability was partnership, not penalty.