Climate change, not data centers, behind Colorado River drought

“Lake Powell dropped 34 feet in one year. Data centers are guzzling water while our reservoirs are drying up,” says text over an August 21, 2026 Facebook reel.

On X, another user claimed: “There are many Data Centers that have been put in the Lake Mead area and draw directly from the lake.” 

The narrative circulated across platforms as the Colorado River basin suffered seasonal record lows in 2026 — and as concerns over the data centers powering America’s artificial intelligence boom emerged as a key issue ahead of November’s midterm elections.

But “those statements are just factually inaccurate,” said Bronson Mack, outreach manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA).

“Climate change is what is affecting the Colorado River and Lake Mead,” Mack told AFP in a September 3 email. “Not data centers.”

Prolonged drought

To support the desert region’s cities such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, the United States developed a vast system drawing from the Colorado River, which rises in the Rocky Mountains and winds its way to the sea in Mexico. The river’s two key reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, store the snowmelt-fed river water for year-round distribution.

But according to environmental nonprofits, the river’s flows have reduced by 20 percent since 2000 — and by 30 percent since 2019 (archived here and here).

Edith Zagona, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, told AFP that 25-year-old drought conditions — combined with low precipitation and high demands in 2026 — are responsible for draining the reservoirs to their modern levels (archived here and here).

“This year is especially bad because of record-breaking low snowpack in the Rocky Mountains,” she said in an August 28 email.

Colorado State University climatologist Allie Mazurek said an abnormally dry winter and spring stunted snowpacks, contributing to record-low streamflow (archived here and here). Scorching temperatures continued with the hottest July ever recorded in the US, further increasing evaporation from the lakes (archived here).

“These climate factors have put a strain on the Colorado River, its tributaries, and the reservoirs it feeds, including Powell and Mead,” Mazurek said on September 1.

Lake Mead was just a quarter full, while Lake Powell hit an all-time low, in late summer 2026.

The federal government unveiled a 10-year plan in August that imposes restrictions to the states of California, Arizona, and Nevada in order to mitigate water scarcity in the basin (archived here). 

No direct access

The Colorado River water is allocated by sectors, with agriculture accounting for roughly 80 percent (archived here, here and here).

While data centers add to the region’s water demand, the University of Colorado Boulder’s Zagona said they are not allowed to directly pump from the basin.

“Data centers would have to apply to the water utilities in their area for water (or for a permit to pump groundwater). They cannot simply take water from the river,” she told AFP.

Indirect paths to access the water do exist, said Rhett Larson, a water law professor at Arizona State University (archived here). Non-agriculture businesses can legally purchase farmlands that hold water rights and then transfer them to an industrial use or retire them to receive conservation benefits, a process known as “buy and dry” (archived here).

But such moves have led to active litigation and can have direct consumer impacts, including on the price of water, Larson told AFP on August 28.

Experts said “buy and dry” is not yet a common practice for data centers, and that the sector has used relatively little water in the Western United States.

An example of the scale is the amount of water consumed by the roughly 20 data centers in Las Vegas near the river, said Mack, from the SNWA.

“In 2025, water used by data centers in Southern Nevada (Las Vegas) accounted for about 773 million gallons, which is 0.52 percent of Southern Nevada’s total water use. So, they do not have a significant impact on our local water supply.”

Valid concerns

Citizen concerns over data centers’ water usage are still justified, experts said, because there is no industry-wide consistency in how companies report environmental impacts.

“Because of the immense pressure to build data centers as fast and possible and at any cost, many developers are operating behind the grid, cutting corners and avoiding environmental regulations and public scrutiny,” said Sasha Luccioni, an artificial intelligence and climate researcher, in a September 9 email (archived here).

There are also hidden water costs, such as the water used to generate the electricity that powers the data center or to manufacture its chips and servers (archived here). 

Neha Gour, a George Mason University PhD candidate in science communication, said the level of consolidation also matters (archived here).

“When many large data centers are concentrated in one region, their cumulative demands on electricity, water, land, and infrastructure can become much more significant,” Gour told AFP on September 4.

AFP has previously debunked other misinformation about data centers here, here and here.