No way Hosé: droughts for data centres?
The desire for Britain to become a hub for AI development to bring ‘growth’ is well documented. The amount of water necessary to keep these data centres running, however, is rarely shared in the mainstream.
Meanwhile, shameless water companies are blaming households for wasted water, proposing hose pipe bans when they’re used to cool down our environment, keeping plants and grass alive through the hot months.
The futility of these measures has been made blatant, with Greenpeace reporting that in England and Wales 2.8bn litres of water is lost to leaky pipes daily. For perspective, average water use from hosepipes is around 500m litres daily, 5x less than the loss from leaks.
Underinvestment and mismanagement again at fault, we know where the money goes. Yet still, they are thinking to supply more of our ever scarcer water supply to AI companies.
The fantasy of a UK Silicon valley is just that, superficial, synthetic and elitist. This would increase domestic output, but we know how large the tax breaks would be. Palantir has already established its foothold in the UK as a surveillance magnate through their £330m NHS contract.
Seeing AI companies operate out of the UK would be a win for the establishment, this however, couldn’t be further from the truth for the rest of us - with tangible impacts on our water system.
The narrative would be levelling up, more jobs in rural areas, producing an economic uptick. We have however, seen companies like Meta building datacentres in the US, where their £750m operation in Newton county Georgia, is causing residents of the area to have low water pressure if they're lucky, and no water in many cases - the flush of a toilet becoming a luxury.
Is it not then convenient, that the very recent investment in water infrastructure aligns with the adoption of AI worldwide, with the UK obviously wanting to be involved in its expansion.
This would require good water infrastructure, reliable pipes and persistent maintenance – which naturally would cause immense disruption.
The scale of supply: Redistribution of water to amplify the concentration of wealth.
The first question we need to ask is, what is more profitable to the government? AI investment, or free water for the population. The former is the money maker, but how much it will cost to deal with water shortages crippling domestic agriculture?
It could worsen the food insecurity crisis, whilst adding another layer: water insecurity.
Working families unable to wash clothes, dishes, shower, and have consistent access to drinking water. What happens to the price of bottled water?
The fact is, like with the climate emergency, we aren’t explicitly told the worst case scenario, or the true extent of resources needed – in this case, the amount of water required to keep data centres running.
The U.K.’s Government Digital Sustainability Alliance’s (GDSA) 2025 report estimates that global water usage would go from 1.1bn to 6.6bn cubic metres by 2027. This is not a marginal increase, it is a clear signal that those approving data centres have no care for the wellbeing of normal people, nor nature and ecology.
What’s more, the Environment Agency only permits the use of drinking water to cool the servers used to run AI models, meaning that a growing proportion of the water treatment we pay for is going directly towards chat bots and models that are taking away jobs that are contributing towards high levels of unemployment.
Meanwhile the trade body Water UK estimates that data centres are using at least 6.6m litres of drinking water a day, pair that with the UK Government’s goal of tripling data centre capacity by 2030, the daily usage goal could raise to 19.8m litres a day.
This is likely to be a gross underestimate, as England’s current water shortfall is exceeding forecasts by over 220m litres per day (less water than expected). Affinity water (based in an area with 120+ data centres proposed or under construction) shared with MP’s in May, that some were requesting to use 3m litres of water a day, not for the whole region but for one data centre. Considering the droughts the UK is, and will continue to experience, allocating water reserves to computers over households and farming paints a dark picture for the years to come
(Guardian)
We are the ones paying for it, whilst we would also incur the costs similar to the citizens of Georgia. A publicly funded, privately owned utility, whose executives pay themselves millions a year, simultaneously poisoning our country further, whilst pandering to oppressive tech oligarchs.
The strain it would also put on the electricity grid is little discussed, but in Trump land, the US Environmental Protection agency said on 27/07/26 that for data centres that the Clean Air Act (CAA) and Acid Rain Program (ARP) restrictions do not apply to power generation facilities that aren’t connected to public energy grids.
This is essentially a green light for data centres, and other energy intensive businesses that have ‘islanded’ energy production facilities to further harm the environment and cause acid rain.
What’s to say the U.K. won’t follow suit?
Spiralling: Cripple Private Water before AI sucks us dry.
A full circle moment, Britain gets deindustrialised, putting millions more into job insecurity, let alone food, water and climate insecurities. A very small minority benefit, with most of them being non-tax paying, foreign tech billionaires. Let’s be patriotic about our water infrastructure, rivers and seas.
40 years, and £80bn+ of profit later (all misspent), the system is entirely asset stripped, bills rising over 20% (in real terms), as they try to cover their incompetence with late stage investment, in attempts to reindustrialise Britain with the most socially damaging industry out there.
Palantir is just the start, as the world persistently descends into conflict, now is not the time to shy away from our collective struggles.
If we fail to act, data centres will be built, the water and profit will be flowing
If we can’t take back our water, what else will we allow to be taken away from us?