Balancing Water Demands: Driving Sustainability and Resilience Amidst Escalating Challenges

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Balancing Water Demands: Driving Sustainability and Resilience Amidst Escalating Challenges

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Across the United States, water remains a critical issue as both a resource under strain and a focus of rapid innovation. This past week, Amazon announced an expansion of its recycled water program at data centers nationwide. According to ESG Dive, Amazon plans to use recycled water for cooling in more than 120 of its data center locations by 2030, building on earlier projects in Virginia and California and expanding into Georgia and Mississippi. The company, which has already reached more than half of its “water positive” goal, aims to preserve over 530 million gallons of drinking water in communities where it operates. As large data centers proliferate to support artificial intelligence demand, their consumption of water for cooling has become an urgent concern, with experts noting the competition between data centers and communities for land and water resources is increasing.

In parallel, the U.S. water sector is facing substantial challenges, highlighted in the newly released Black and Veatch 2025 Water Report. The report, which captures feedback from hundreds of utility stakeholders, describes the industry as squeezed between complex public health demands and the accelerating need to modernize. Persistent problems include aging infrastructure, ongoing workforce attrition, and mounting risks from per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or forever chemicals. Digital transformation and artificial intelligence are introducing additional pressures, particularly cyberthreats, and there is a heightened sense of uncertainty due to unclear regulatory paths and insufficient funding for critical upgrades. Black and Veatch’s Donnie Ginn emphasized the urgent need for smarter sustainability practices and greater system resilience as climate change amplifies risks to water infrastructure.

Globally, water insecurity is also escalating. The United Nations World Water Development Report, as relayed by UNESCO, warns that up to three billion people worldwide now experience water shortages for at least one month per year, and nearly half the global population lacks access to safely managed sanitation. The situation is compounded by more frequent and severe droughts, directly threatening food security and economic stability in many regions. Another review echoed by PreventionWeb stresses that unless urgent action is taken, more than half the world’s food production is at risk of failure within the next 25 years due to the accelerating water crisis and the ongoing destruction of crucial freshwater ecosystems.

These converging trends in the United States and worldwide reveal an urgent need to balance growing demands for water with sustainability, resilience, and adaptation, as population, technology, and climate change continue to reshape the challenges facing this finite and essential resource.