Water is a critical resource for data centers and an efficient means of cooling. However, meeting the growing water demand of data centers requires substantial peak water withdrawals, which many communities in the United States cannot supply, especially during the hottest days of the year. This largely overlooked water capacity constraint is emerging as a bottleneck for data centers and can force operators to rely on less efficient dry cooling, further stressing the power grid during summer peaks. In this paper, we focus on the direct water withdrawal of U.S. data centers for cooling and examine their impacts on public water systems. Our analysis indicates that, if the 2024 water use intensity persists, U.S. data centers could collectively require 697-1,451 million gallons per day (MGD) of new water capacity through 2030, comparable to New York City's average daily supply of roughly 1,000 MGD. Under an optimistic scenario with a compound annual water use intensity reduction by 10%, the water capacity demand decreases to 227-604 MGD, although high-growth IT loads could still require enough capacity to hypothetically supply about half of New York City for most of the year. The total valuation of the new water capacity is on the order of \$10 billion, reaching up to \$58 billion in the high-growth case. These impacts are highly concentrated on communities hosting data centers. Finally, we provide recommendations to address the growing water capacity demand of U.S. data centers, including reporting peak water use, developing corporate-community partnerships, adopting a Water Capacity Neutral approach (colloquially "Pipe Neutral") to allow host communities to retain limited water capacity resources, and implementing coordinated water-power planning to responsibly leverage water for peak power reduction and opportunistically utilize surplus power to mitigate impacts on public water systems.

翻译：水是数据中心的关键资源，也是高效的冷却介质。然而，满足数据中心日益增长的用水需求需要大量的峰值取水量，而美国许多社区无法提供这样的供水能力，尤其是在一年中最炎热的时期。这一长期被忽视的水资源容量限制正逐渐成为数据中心的瓶颈，并可能迫使运营商依赖效率较低的干式冷却，从而在夏季用电高峰期间进一步加剧电网压力。本文聚焦于美国数据中心用于冷却的直接取水行为，并考察其对公共供水系统的影响。我们的分析表明，若2024年的用水强度持续不变，到2030年美国数据中心总计可能需要新增6.97-14.51亿加仑/日（MGD）的供水能力，相当于纽约市日均约10亿加仑的供水量。在用水强度以10%年复合率降低的乐观情景下，需水容量将降至2.27-6.04亿加仑/日，但高增长的IT负载仍可能要求相当于纽约市全年大半时间约一半供水量的理论容量。新增供水容量的总估值约为100亿美元，在高增长情景下可达580亿美元。这些影响高度集中于承载数据中心的社区。最后，我们提出应对美国数据中心日益增长的需水容量的建议，包括：报告峰值用水量、发展企业-社区合作伙伴关系、采用"供水容量中性"（俗称"管道中性"）方法以使承载社区保留有限的水资源容量、实施水电协同规划以负责任地利用水资源降低峰值电力负荷，并适时利用过剩电力缓解对公共供水系统的影响。