1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Block new data center construction before these facilities permanently drain the water supplies that communities and farmers depend on. Legislators in at least 14 states are already considering moratoriums, and the evidence behind that caution is alarming. Several proposed facilities sit directly above the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches beneath eight states and already has nearly 27 percent of its stored water gone in some areas. The problem is not reversible on any human timescale. Colorado State University professor Sudeep Pasricha has noted that recharge rates across the Great Plains often total less than an inch per year, and that lost water could take centuries to millennia to return. More than 1,500 new data centers are currently under construction nationwide, with the majority headed to rural areas in the South and Midwest, precisely where agricultural communities rely most on groundwater. A construction boom of this scale, without a comprehensive oversight framework in place, is a permanent trade of farmland and drinking water for server capacity. That is not a trade worth making.