Meta has detailed for the first time the large amount of water its artificial intelligence data center being built in rural northeast Louisiana will require, estimating the average daily use for the massive facility will be comparable to what around 17,000 residents consume each day.

Water use by new data centers has become a major concern nationally as construction ramps up to feed the race to develop AI, with dwindling reserves blamed on the expansive computer warehouses in some states.

Meta says consumption for its Louisiana facility will be sustainable, and state officials have agreed, citing modeling that has not raised significant concerns.

Independent water researchers, however, caution that the facility’s actual use should be monitored closely, stressing the potential for negative effects if it consumes as much water as allowed. They also note a lack of state monitoring related to such water use, a gap that Louisiana officials similarly pointed out.

The data center in Richland Parish is registered to consume more than 23 million gallons of water per day, or 8.4 billion gallons per year, according to state records and the company itself. If it were to max out that allowed capacity for a year, it would use more than all of Google’s data centers combined in 2023.

But Meta says those limits are substantially higher than what it will actually use annually. According to the company, the data center will use between 500 to 600 million gallons per year once it is up and running in 2028, or an average of 1.5 million gallons per day.

While far less, it is still more than three times higher than the company’s most water-intensive data center, according to Meta’s 2024 sustainability report.

The company explains that its water use, necessary to cool the constantly running server network spread across the sprawling facility, will primarily occur in warmer months. For more than half the year, no water would be needed to cool the servers.

The higher figures are needed for especially hot times of year, when the most water will be used, Meta says. The water will be drawn from the Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer, which also supplies communities and farms in the surrounding area, and it will be cycled through a “closed-loop” system similar to a giant car radiator.

Meta has agreed to voluntarily submit its annual reports of water use for its first five years of operation, said Patrick Courreges, a spokesperson for the state’s energy department, which registers the wells.

The company is pledging to stick to its promises, while Gov. Jeff Landry’s economic development agency says the gains the project will bring to one of Louisiana’s most impoverished regions must be taken into account.

“Governor Landry has made it clear that we do not pursue projects that put our citizens at risk or disadvantage,” said Emma Wagner, a spokesperson for Louisiana’s economic development agency.

Water researchers at LSU, Tulane and elsewhere nonetheless expressed concern over the maximum amounts permitted for the facility. They note that there is no state regulatory body tasked with monitoring Meta’s water usage or the condition of the aquifer over time.

“There’s no incentive for (Meta) to use less water because they don’t have to pay for it, and it’s not regulated or reported,” said Christopher Dalbom, director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy.

‘They should be concerned’

Meta’s Louisiana data center, expected to cost $27 billion, will be the company’s biggest such facility worldwide and a centerpiece in its race to build “superintelligence” faster than competitors like Google and OpenAI. It is slated to create thousands of construction jobs and include up to 500 permanent workers.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken of further expanding the data center to a size that would rival the footprint of Manhattan, though some analysts have expressed doubt over whether that is realistic. President Donald Trump also praised the massive size of the facility, called “Hyperion,” the father of the sun in Greek mythology. 

In addition to its water requirements, its staggering energy demands will increase Entergy’s electricity needs by around 30% in Louisiana. That has been the subject of a separate heated debate.

Meta conducted a third-party study to evaluate groundwater availability and the impact of pumping on the aquifer, a company spokesperson said. It received approval from state officials confirming that the maximum pumping would not impact local systems.

The company’s testing found that its water usage would not cause any land sinking, which would also be harmful to its own facility.

Courreges, the state Department of Conservation and Energy spokesperson, said the department’s models suggest there would be no serious environmental concern. He said there may be some subsidence, but not to the point where it would be “detrimental” to residents and the water table, according to what has been presented so far.

“Everything has some impact,” Courreges said.

Frank Tsai, the director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at LSU, agreed that if Meta only used the lower amount it predicted — versus its maximum allowance — the aquifer would not likely be negatively impacted. 

However, long-term pumping at the maximum registered 23 million gallons per day could harm the environment around the site, Tsai said. The facility will draw from one of the most-pumped aquifers in Louisiana, already vulnerable to overuse.

Tsai’s team ran a 17-year simulation assuming Meta withdrew the maximum daily allowable amount. It found that groundwater levels dropped over 65 feet beneath some areas of the facility.

Lower water levels can lead to permanent land sinking and saltwater creeping into supplies. The threat of salty drinking water has been a longstanding issue in Baton Rouge, for example, due to overpumping of the aquifer used for that area. 

In rural Richland Parish, there are scores of agricultural and domestic wells near the planned facility, including around 50 within a mile of Meta’s perimeter. Tsai’s preliminary data showed that the impacted area, called the “cone of depression,” extends beyond the data center’s 70-football-field size.

“If the groundwater level is lower, you need more energy to lift the water,” Tsai said, speaking of his analysis of the maximum levels allowed. “So it will cost more money to the farmers.” 

Agricultural wells are not predicted to run dry under the maximum scenario, Tsai said, though there are likely smaller, shallower domestic wells in the area that are not registered with the state. Public records also note the possibility of unregistered wells near the facility.

Under the worst-case maximum scenario, those with some of the shallower wells “should be concerned about whether they are going to have enough water to drink or not,” Tsai said.

‘No actual scrutiny’

In Louisiana, water is less regulated than energy, and industrial users are not required to report how much they consume.

Meta is required to register new wells with the state energy department, and the oversight essentially stops there. Louisiana’s energy agency doesn’t maintain an inventory of water use in the state, and there is no local water authority in the area that regulates usage.

“There’s no actual scrutiny on the use of public resources,” said Tyler Gray, who was secretary of the state Department of Conservation and Energy until September. Courreges, the department spokesman, confirmed the lack of regulatory power.

Gray said that Meta initially asked for “too much” water, so the company reduced the numbers.

From July to September 2024, Louisiana officials warned Meta’s subsidiary company, Laidley, that nine wells that would be used to cool the facility posed similar environmental risks to the surrounding areas that Tsai’s model found.

Those issues included acute water level decline, reduced water quality and possible land sinking. The state also noted the presence of existing water wells within a mile radius of Meta’s proposed wells. 

“That’s the limit of our authority, saying: ‘We think there’s a concern, we see where you might want to do this differently,’” Courreges said. “And they did scale it back.”

In May 2025, the state registered six of these wells, determining in a letter that they “should not adversely affect water withdrawal from other registered water wells in the area or to the sustainability of the aquifer.”

The pumping rates for these six wells totaled around 36 million gallons per day, but those figures have since been lowered to 23 million gallons per day. Meta maintains that even the 23 million per day maximum rate would not adversely affect the aquifer.

‘Massive amount of water’

In Meta’s “closed-loop” system, liquid circulates through and minimizes the need for constant additions of water.

The servers are cooled further by air — essentially a system of fans. New water is only needed when the temperature exceeds 90 degrees and winds are gusting in a specific pattern, the company says. Meta predicts that no additional water will be used for over half of the year. 

Data centers using closed-loop systems consume less water than evaporative models that transform a steady influx of water into steam, ultimately vented out of the facility. But the less water-intensive method needs more energy, which means more water for the fossil fuel-powered gas plants running Meta’s data center in the first place. A spokesperson for Entergy said water for two of the electricity plants will come from the nearby town of Delhi. 

“Ironically, you might be using more water,” said Melissa Scanlan, the director of the Center for Water Policy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the author of a national analysis on data center water consumption. 

In 2023, data centers in the U.S. directly used around 17 billion gallons of water to cool their servers, plus an additional 211 billion gallons of water for electricity generation powering the facilities, according to a report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Large facilities can use up to 5 million gallons per day.

Scanlan said that the water demands are unclear for a massive data center in the Great Lakes region, as part of OpenAI’s Stargate Program, but that one million gallons per day is “the highest figure” that has been reported for that project. 

Another frequently cited example involves a Meta data center in Georgia. Families living next to it saw their taps go dry, and the surrounding county is on track for a water crisis, The New York Times reported. Meta cast doubt on whether it was to blame for the problems.

Mark Davis, director of the Tulane Center for Environmental Law, is worried about the cumulative impact of water-hungry industrial projects, including the data center. One facility might not wreak irreparable damage, he said, but building “facility after facility after facility” could lead to problems. 

He pointed to Louisiana’s long history of environmental damage left behind by industry: timbering canals, oil and gas canals and abandoned oil wells, among others.

“Are we going to do it again?” he said. 

Jesse Washington, the mayor of nearby Delhi, said residents in the 2,000-person town have expressed worry about the water supply, which draws from the same aquifer. To ensure that everyone has enough water, Washington said that Meta drilled another well around three months ago that connects to the town’s main line.

Based on analysis from engineers, he said he feels “pretty good” about the data center’s water demands and Delhi’s ongoing ability to serve its residents. But he wants to stay prepared as Meta’s project unfolds. 

“We really don’t know what it’s going to do until it’s in full swing,” Washington said.