Recycled Water Expands Its Role in Data Center Cooling

Liquid Death and Garage Beer used a campaign featuring former Philadelphia Eagles player Jason Kelce to joke that people could cool AI data centers with urine. Behind the stunt is a real infrastructure issue: data centers require large volumes of water to prevent servers from overheating, and treated wastewater is increasingly being used as an alternative to potable water.

In Loudoun County, Virginia, home to more than 250 data centers and with at least two dozen more planned, facilities collectively used about 200 million gallons of recycled water each day as of 2025. Loudoun Water said that amount represented 43% of daily data center water use. A further 260 million gallons, or 57%, still came from potable water supplies.

Wastewater can become industrial cooling water

Michael Obradovitch, vice president of Data Center Global Accounts at Ecolab, said alternative water sources are already being used to cool data centers and can partly offset demand for drinking water. Recycled water is produced by treating wastewater and sewage so it can be used again.

Bruno Pigott, executive director of the WateReuse Association and a former acting assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, stressed that untreated urine is not a cooling solution. Salts, urea, bacteria and organic matter can leave mineral deposits, requiring continual cleaning if introduced directly into cooling equipment.

Instead, treatment facilities use technologies including membrane bioreactors, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light to produce water suitable for industrial use. In some cases, treatment can take recycled water to drinking-water quality. Dr. Greta Zornes, practice leader for water reuse at CDM Smith, said recycled water has been used for industrial cooling for decades and that demand for data center cooling projects has increased.

Infrastructure determines where reuse can scale

The availability of recycled water depends on physical infrastructure. Zornes noted that a data center must be near a wastewater treatment facility large enough to supply the required volume. Rural sites may lack plants that process enough wastewater for treatment and reuse at data center scale.

Building that capability takes time. Obradovitch said data centers can act as anchors for water infrastructure by contributing capital alongside municipalities. Meta, for example, plans to invest at least $270 million in wastewater infrastructure projects near its data centers.

Pigott is also advocating legislation that would provide a 30% tax credit to help industries expand recycled-water infrastructure. For businesses planning data center capacity, water availability should be assessed with power, land and network access, including whether treatment capacity can reduce dependence on local potable supplies.