Name: Utah data centers will be forced to report water usage under fast-tracked bill
Uploaded: 2025-11-21T03:39:17.952Z
Duration: 2 min 45 s
Description: Utah data centers will be forced to report water usage under fast-tracked bill

Utah data centers will be forced to report water usage under fast-tracked bill

Salt Lake City

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Utah lawmakers have advanced a bill that will require data centers to report their water usage, addressing concerns about the lack of data on how much water these facilities consume. The legislation, introduced by Representative Jill Cofford, aims to provide state officials with accurate information to better manage and plan for future water needs as the number of data centers increases.

The bill, which passed unanimously in committee, includes a $10,000 daily fine for non-compliance and is seen as the first step toward broader water resource management in Utah. Environmentalists have voiced support for the measure, and additional conservation bills are also being considered, including efforts to protect the Great Salt Lake.

AI will demand 1.1 to 1.7 trillion gallons of water globally and it's just coming and I think that this is a good opportunity for us to start understanding what that need is. I'm Ben Winslow on Utah's Capitol Hill. Right now the state has no idea how much water data centers actually use. A new bill introduced for the legislature could change that and it could be just the beginning. It's not something that they voluntarily report. Representative Jill Cofford says Utah is seeing a data center boom. Most use water to cool their servers but the state of Utah has no real idea how much water they use. It seems like across the country to be honest there's a lot of questions about how much water data centers use and there's a few studies that are out there some estimates that are out there but not specifics. The numbers vary but there are dozens of data centers in Utah. State officials have an idea of some from publicly available data. For example the NSA data center in Bluffdale used about 23.5 million gallons of water in just one month. NOVA in West Jordan about 85,000 gallons in a month. There are plans in the works for more data centers as technology and growth keeps demanding it. It's why Representative Cofford says Utah needs to know how much water data centers are using. She presented a bill on it to the Legislature's Water Development Commission. What are you diverting? What are you consuming? What are you discharging? So that we can get a handle on it we can plan for the future. In public comment she won support from environmentalists. I do think it's important that we have a clear idea with the amount of water we're looking at. It passed unanimously fast-tracking it in the upcoming legislative session. Now I know that a lot of these data centers are going different technology air cooling and gas cooling and so on and so forth but we just need to know how much water they're using. While the bill only focuses on reporting water use it has a $10,000 a day fine for those who won't give up the information. Representative Cofford acknowledges it could also lead to limits on their water use down the road. This is step one in a process as we look at the overall scheme of where we're using water in the state how we're using water in the state and how we're protecting this incredibly valuable resource and look I'm running legislation to help protect the Great Salt Lake that's always at the forefront of my mind. The legislature's Water Development Commission also advanced more conservation related bills including one that sends stormwater to the Great Salt Lake and one that sets landscaping standards water wise landscaping standards for public facilities in the future. On the hill Ben Winslow Fox 13 News Utah

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Utah data centers will be forced to report water usage under fast-tracked bill

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