An Oklahoma bill changing how groundwater consumption is tracked is advancing with an amendment adding constraints on data centers seeking an Oklahoma groundwater permit.
Senate Bill 259 would force commercial groundwater users to meter water pulled from wells. An amendment added April 8 aims to address concerns about data centers’ water usage.
According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, large data centers can use up to five million gallons of water a day in their cooling systems to avoid overheating.
With this amendment, data centers seeking groundwater permits would have to use closed-loop cooling systems, which recirculate water or other air conditioning methods rather than the traditional evaporative systems, which save money but are much less water-efficient.
Rep. Carl Newton (R-Cherokee), co-author of the bill, said there are several data centers considering Oklahoma as a start-up place that will need to either find new ways to cool or have no access to aquifers.
“The goal is that if they were coming in to use (water) for evaporation only, then we would not allow them to come in over our underground aquifers. Now, we're not talking about surface water, … just about underground water,” Newton said. “To cool that they can use, generally, air conditioners. You know, you don't have water that's hooked up to your air conditioner for your house.”
This measure will not affect data centers already in Oklahoma, only ones looking to develop in the state in the future.
According to Newton, the initial pull for Senate Bill 259 was concerns surrounding declining underground aquifers. Newton said the water pulled from underground aquifers needs to be measured.
“We measure everything,” Newton said. “Except we don't require measuring of the most important commodity we have which is water, and we don't require the largest users of that water to measure.”
In Oklahoma, water is the personal property owner’s right, which Newton said makes it more difficult to pass legislation.
While this measure’s effectiveness on overall groundwater consumption is unknown, Newton hopes it will provide insight on the state’s aquifers and who might be overusing water if passed.
“I don't think all irrigators are overusing, but I think this gets to give us a better handle of if we know where aquifers are and if they're measuring, we'll know how much we're using,” Newton said. “It gives us a better way to measure how much water is going to be able to be maintained.”
Ward 5 Councilmember Trey Kirby, who is a facility manager, rancher and small-business owner, said the closed-loop cooling systems would be more effective but that there are still problems with water pollution.
“The closed-loop cooling system will be a lot more efficient and effective. It has a lot less water waste,” Kirby said. “But you still have a brine that you have to put out at some point in time, you got to drain that polluted water, and where are we going to put that polluted water?”
Kirby said letting data centers use water in general is concerning as many data centers help support AI workloads.
“(Water is) a resource that we need to live,” Kirby said. “AI is not a resource that we need to live. We lived for 200 years or longer without it; we can survive without it. But we can't survive without water.”
Using too much water is a big worry for Kirby, and he said he shut down his own irrigation companies due to water consumption.
“I own two irrigation companies, and I shut them down a few years back when Lake Thunderbird went almost dry, and it's because I was not going to be part of the problem,” Kirby said. “I'm not going to go around and install water sprinkler systems so people can water their flower beds, and their yards, and the sidewalks, and the roads when our lake that we pull 6 million gallons a day from was literally dry, and that's our water for our consumption.”
This story was edited by Macey Thaxton and Natalie Armour. Hannah Lambert, Kennedy Johnson and Sophie Hemker copy edited this story.
