The headline number
#1
fastest-growing US data center market by new capacity under construction in the mid-2020s (Atlanta metro)
Water stress
Moderate: metro Atlanta has fought two states over water rights for decades; new hyperscale demand lands on a system already in litigation.
The local story
Atlanta became the surprise winner of the AI land rush: cheap land, fiber density and Georgia Power's willingness to contract gigawatts pulled QTS, Microsoft, Meta and a dozen wholesale operators into Fulton, Douglas and Newton counties.
Water makes it complicated. Metro Atlanta draws from the Chattahoochee system at the center of the decades-long tri-state 'water wars' with Alabama and Florida. Local reporting put one QTS campus's permitted draw near a million gallons a day, and several counties have since added data-center-specific water conditions to zoning approvals.
Georgia is the state to watch for the political question: in 2024-25 its legislature debated suspending data center tax incentives partly over water and grid impacts, the first such reversal attempt in a major market.
Cite this pagev1.3.1 · 2026-09
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Sources
Cited on this page, in order of appearance.
- 1Shehabi, A., Smith, S. J., Hubbard, A., et al. (2024). 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL-2001637: 176 TWh electricity and 17B gal direct water in 2023, with 2028 projections. (accessed 2026-06) government
- 2Siddik, M. A. B., Shehabi, A., & Marston, L. (2021). The environmental footprint of data centers in the United States. Environmental Research Letters 16(6): watershed-scale direct + indirect water footprint. (accessed 2026-06) peer-reviewed
- 3Local utility filings and news reporting (2025). Aggregated local reporting on individual data center campuses. Utility filings and local journalism on per-site water demand (Memphis, West Des Moines, The Dalles, Bluffdale, metro Atlanta), used where ESG reports do not break sites out. (accessed 2026-09) news