Members of the Legislature’s Select Water Committee met in Cheyenne last week to hear from state and elected officials, representatives from data center companies and members of the public to address concerns around water used by data centers.
Under the Trump administration, the United States has tried to ease the burden on developers building the infrastructure for an artificial intelligence (AI) supply chain. Data centers are the linchpins in that supply chain, housing the systems that run AI, host websites and stream movies. Data centers, and those used for AI specifically, require large amounts of energy and water, and cities like Cheyenne have touted themselves as having both.
Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins said the city has “significant interest in more data center development around our community.” Based on numbers from Collins, Cheyenne has 13 major functional data centers, with smaller ones scattered throughout industrial zones and business parks.
The mayor said they discuss a range of hardlines when developers take an interest in Cheyenne, such as covering electricity costs, limiting light pollution, lowering noise levels and taking philanthropic interest in the community. However, Collins focused on water regulation for the committee.
“The original data centers built in Cheyenne used more water-intensive systems,” said Collins. “But since I've become mayor, we have limited data centers to using technology to cool the servers.”
The technology Collins referred to is a closed-loop system, or using water to help dissipate the heat produced by central processing units (CPUS’s) and graphical processing units (GPUs) via a limited amount of liquid coolant without consistent replenishment. A representative from Microsoft says these systems can go for five years before needing to be recharged, and Prometheus Hyperscale is using a liquid coolant common in the oil industry that it plans to recycle when no longer usable.
According to Collins, the 13 major data centers use 200 acre-feet of water annually, or 1.48% of all the water used in Cheyenne. Collins said he asked two data centers currently under construction how much water they’ll use in a year. He was told the centers would be equivalent to the amount of water consumed by eight single-family Cheyenne homes in a year, or about 2 acre-feet of water.
However, not everyone is convinced the system is as efficient as claimed.
Rep. Garry Brown (R-Cheyenne) spoke to the Water Committee as a member of the public. Brown argued that the closed-loop cooling systems may have to be replenished with new water more frequently than expected and could be discharged if found to have harmful chemicals, referencing a similar story out of Ohio.
“We find that they will claim that the system is filled once and basically circulated forever,” said Brown. “Well, that may be true in a laboratory, but we don't live in a laboratory. We live in Wyoming. We live in a state where water is a big issue.”
Anna Kaufman with the Wyoming Outdoor Council also touched on closed-loop systems. Kaufman noted that the systems had improved and minimized water losses. However, that often shifts the burden away from water and toward power.
“The closed loop systems are more water-efficient, but they do take more energy, and where that energy is coming from is important,” said Kaufman. “If they're not tapped into the grid and they're building new power plants for behind-the-meter generation, that's going to completely change what their footprint looks like in terms of water usage.”
Kaufman argued that some communities may not be ready for such infrastructure or energy requirements as data centers continue to look to rural areas for development.
Steve DelBianco, the CEO of Netchoice, was the last public commenter to speak. DelBianco said that resentment toward data centers was often misplaced. Instead, he suggested Wyomingites leverage the energy assets of their state to bring in data centers that, according to DelBianco, create jobs and bring tax revenue.
“Why does our industry need to build so many data centers? I've had that question at hearings like this all over the country. And I usually turn it around and say, ‘Well, why do you need so many data centers? Because you understand our industry builds them because you, the businesses, the individuals, the government, and educational institutions continue to ask for more stuff to be in the cloud,’” he said.
A trend of public outcry against data centers has focused on the rapid development of AI-specific data centers. AI data centers require significantly more resources and development compared to cloud-based storage or centers that facilitate internet traffic. Tallgrass and Crusoe, which plan to build a 10 gigawatt data center just outside the city of Cheyenne, did not have a representative speak during the meeting.
The committee made no motions or explicit plans for bill drafting at the end of the meeting. The Select Water Committee plans to meet again on Aug. 4, with the location yet to be determined.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
