Part one of a four-part series examining the real impacts of data centers on Iowa communities.
What You Need to Know Before Reading Further
- The Central Iowa Water Works voluntary water restriction had nothing to do with data centers. The request was triggered by elevated nitrate levels in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers — an agricultural runoff issue, not a demand problem driven by tech facilities.
- Meta’s data center in Altoona does not draw from the Central Iowa Water Works system at all. It uses the Jordan Aquifer, a deep groundwater source completely separate from the city’s supply. Whatever Meta uses has zero effect on your tap water or CIWW’s capacity.
- Iowa’s data centers use water-based cooling only during the hottest months. Evaporative cooling only kicks in above 80°F. The rest of the year, cold Iowa air does the job for free — and Microsoft is converting all new construction to closed-loop systems that use near-zero water year-round.
- Across the entire Central Iowa Water Works system, Microsoft’s five data center campuses account for just 0.3 to 0.9 percent of total water use. That is the 2025 figure, confirmed by the General Manager of West Des Moines Water Works. The data centers are not straining the regional system.
- Home lawn irrigation accounts for 40 percent of total water use in summer — that is what drove the voluntary conservation request, according to a Waukee city official. Data centers were not a factor.
- Microsoft paid $25 million for water system improvements in West Des Moines and pays the same water rate as every other customer. The city’s water authority says it has capacity for a sixth campus.
- Meta’s Altoona data center uses no more water than a residential neighborhood of similar size would — and less water than a pasta manufacturer already operating in Altoona. The facility employs 400 to 600 workers including contractors and contributes to the local tax base in ways that will grow significantly once a 20-year abatement period concludes.
If those facts surprise you, you are not alone. When Central Iowa Water Works asked customers to cut back on lawn watering this spring, social media filled quickly with accusations that data centers were draining the region dry. The story spread fast and felt intuitive. It was also wrong — and the gap between perception and reality is worth examining carefully, because decisions about where data centers get built, and whether they get built at all, are being made right now across Iowa.
What the Water Restriction Was Actually About
On May 27, 2026, Central Iowa Water Works issued a Stage II Water Alert asking customers to voluntarily reduce outdoor water use by 50 percent. The reason stated in the alert: elevated nitrate levels in the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, the source water for the system. High nitrates — a product of agricultural fertilizer runoff, not industrial consumption — require more intensive treatment, which in turn reduces the volume of treated water available. The request was about protecting treatment capacity during a period of high outdoor demand, primarily lawn irrigation, which accounts for an estimated 40 percent of residential water use in summer months.
Data centers were not mentioned in the alert. They were not a contributing factor. A Waukee city official confirmed the dynamic plainly: home irrigation accounts for roughly 40 percent of total residential water use in summer — that is what strains the system during heat waves, not data centers. Within hours of the CIWW alert, data centers were nonetheless the most talked-about cause on social media.
Iowa’s Major Data Centers — and Where Their Water Actually Comes From
Iowa has become one of the most significant data center states in the country. The Des Moines metro region alone hosts 75 data center facilities of various sizes, anchored by hyperscale campuses from some of the world’s largest technology companies. Understanding the water picture requires looking at each major operator separately, because they are not all alike.
Meta — Altoona: Meta’s campus on the northwest side of Altoona is one of the largest data center installations in the Midwest — 2.7 million square feet on 520 acres, with a sixth building either under construction or planned. Meta draws its water from the Jordan Aquifer, a deep bedrock formation that sits well below the shallow aquifer the City of Altoona uses for its municipal supply. The two systems do not interact. Meta’s water usage has no effect on what comes out of Altoona residents’ taps, and no connection whatsoever to the Central Iowa Water Works network that serves Des Moines and surrounding communities.
City officials say Meta’s water consumption is comparable to what a residential development of similar size would require — and that a pasta manufacturer already operating in Altoona actually uses more water than Meta’s data center does. The facility employs 400 people in full-time positions, a number that rises to around 600 when contractors are included. The campus has operated under a 20-year tax abatement that currently generates roughly $3 million per year for the community; when that abatement expires, the annual contribution to local tax coffers is expected to reach approximately $15 million.
Microsoft — West Des Moines: Microsoft has built five data center campuses in West Des Moines since 2012, with a sixth campus approved and under construction. The company owns over 600 acres in the city and has invested an estimated $5 to $6 billion in facilities there. The water story here is more complicated than a single headline can capture — and it is worth telling accurately.
Older Microsoft buildings in West Des Moines used conventional evaporative cooling, which consumed up to 11.5 million gallons of water per month during peak summer conditions, representing roughly 2 to 7 percent of city water usage depending on the season. In 2024, the five campuses combined used 68.5 million gallons for the full year — 2.62 percent of the system’s annual total, making Microsoft the city’s single largest water user. That is a real number, and city officials took it seriously.
West Des Moines officials told Microsoft directly that future projects would need to adopt technology that significantly reduced peak water demand. Microsoft responded. The company announced in January 2026 that its next two new buildings — including the fifth building at the Ginger East campus — would use zero-water cooling technology. The system recirculates water internally between servers and chillers rather than continuously evaporating and replacing large volumes. Industry sources described actual consumption as negligible compared to conventional cooling towers. Construction on the first building incorporating the new technology is expected to take about 18 months.
Iowa’s climate reinforces the trend. Evaporative cooling is only needed when outdoor temperatures climb above 80 degrees Fahrenheit — meaning for most of the year, Iowa’s weather handles the load for free. Microsoft already uses outside air cooling during winters, springs, and falls, with evaporative systems running minimally or shutting down entirely for extended periods. By 2025, that combination of seasonal efficiency and ongoing improvements had already compressed Microsoft’s water footprint: the five West Des Moines campuses used just 2 to 7 percent of the city’s total water supply across the year — and when measured against the full Central Iowa Water Works system serving Des Moines and surrounding communities, the figure drops to 0.3 to 0.9 percent. That is not a rounding error for an operation powering AI infrastructure for one of the world’s largest companies. It is a genuinely small share of a large regional system.
The trajectory is toward even less. Christina Murphy, General Manager of West Des Moines Water Works, confirmed that the sixth campus will use closed-loop cooling — meaning the water-reduction commitment extends to all new construction going forward. Microsoft is also experimenting with an aquifer storage and recovery system: pumping treated water into an underground reservoir during periods of abundant supply, then drawing it back out during summer peak demand. If it works at scale, it would give one of the city’s largest customers a buffer that actually relieves pressure on the public water system rather than adding to it.
Murphy also noted that Microsoft pays the same water rate as every other customer in the system — no special pricing, no negotiated discount. The company has invested $25 million in West Des Moines water system infrastructure, including a 2-million-gallon storage tank completed in 2023. Murphy confirmed the system has capacity to support the sixth campus, and said clearly that the voluntary conservation request customers received this spring had nothing to do with data center usage.
Apple — Waukee: Apple operates a data center campus on 2,000 acres in Waukee at 2995 W. Hickman Road, with over 1.9 million square feet of space that entered operation in August 2024. Of all Iowa’s major data center operators, Apple has the most thoroughly documented water record — because it sought and obtained independent certification.
In July 2025, the Alliance for Water Stewardship — an independent international certification body — audited the Waukee facility over two days and awarded it “Certified Core” status under the AWS International Water Stewardship Standard Version 2. The certification is valid through July 2028. It is not a company press release. It is a third-party audit with a 26-page public report.
The auditors’ finding on water usage is unambiguous. In their own words: “The data center does not use water for cooling.” The facility uses a closed-loop system with air-cooled chillers that removes heat without consuming water at all. The only water used on site goes to restrooms, sinks, and humidifiers — standard building occupancy — plus a one-time pipe-flushing event in November 2024. The auditors confirmed there are no significant water losses within the system and that water consumption “remains low” with no challenge to the local water balance.
There is an irony worth noting here. While social media users were blaming Iowa data centers for the CIWW conservation request last month, Apple had already spent the previous summer submitting its Waukee facility to an independent water audit — voluntarily, at its own initiative. The certification was issued in July 2025. The outrage came in May 2026. The company had already done the homework its critics assumed it had avoided.
The audit also identified the shared water challenges affecting the Raccoon River watershed, where the Waukee campus sits. The independent auditors noted that American Rivers ranked the Raccoon River the 9th most endangered river in the country — with its primary threats being bacterial contamination from over 750 factory farms and nutrient runoff from agricultural lands. Those are the sources driving Iowa’s water quality problems, including the elevated nitrates that prompted the CIWW conservation request. Apple’s water certification report names the real culprits, and they have nothing to do with data centers. Apple is also actively restoring prairie pothole wetlands on its Waukee property, which the auditors noted will help reduce nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment loads in the watershed.
A Waukee city official confirmed the city has no water concerns related to the Apple campus, noting that home irrigation accounts for roughly 40 percent of summer water demand — far exceeding the data center’s consumption. Waukee draws from multiple sources including Central Iowa Water Works, and maintains an Aquifer Storage and Recovery well — which stores treated water underground during low-demand periods for retrieval when needed — that CIWW itself can access during peak demand.
Google — Council Bluffs and Cedar Rapids: Google has operated a campus in Council Bluffs for years as part of what has grown to a $13.8 billion total Iowa investment. A new campus is now under construction in Cedar Rapids at the Big Cedar Industrial Center, with Google committing to a minimum $576 million investment. Before approving the project, the Cedar Rapids city government did its homework on water. The city’s own fact sheet states plainly that the project is not expected to exceed treatment capacity and that no rate impacts are forecast for residents.
There is also a geographic fact worth noting. Cedar Rapids draws its water supply from wells drilled into the alluvial sand and gravel deposits along the Cedar River — a system that has been extensively studied by the USGS and that the city describes as having ample supply to meet current and future needs. That source has no connection to the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers that supply the Central Iowa Water Works system, meaning the Cedar Rapids data centers and the CIWW conservation request exist in entirely separate water contexts. Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell cited the city’s water due diligence in her May 27, 2026 State of the City address as evidence the project had been evaluated responsibly before approval.
The city’s fact sheet also notes a point that rarely comes up in the public debate: large industrial water consumers can actually reduce water treatment costs for residential customers by spreading fixed infrastructure costs across higher volume. Cedar Rapids, which already hosts several major industrial water users, is familiar with that dynamic.
QTS — Cedar Rapids: QTS operates a colocation campus at the Big Cedar Industrial Center — meaning it leases data center space, power, and connectivity to other companies rather than running its own computing operations. According to QTS’s own Cedar Rapids media kit, the facility uses a closed-loop cooling system that requires very little water. Unlike evaporative systems that continuously draw from and discharge water, a closed-loop system recirculates the same coolant, dramatically reducing consumption. QTS describes the Cedar Rapids campus as the largest economic development project in the city’s history.
The Seasonal Advantage Iowa Has That Nobody Talks About
The national conversation about data center water consumption is largely shaped by facilities in warm, dry climates — think Phoenix, Las Vegas, or the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs — where cooling systems run hard all year and draw heavily on already-stressed water supplies. Iowa is a fundamentally different environment.
Modern data centers use what is called free cooling or economization: when outdoor temperatures drop low enough, outside air handles the cooling load entirely, with no water involved. Microsoft’s spokesperson confirmed the company’s West Des Moines facilities use water-based cooling only about 10 percent of the year. Iowa’s climate — with winters that routinely drop well below freezing and shoulder seasons that extend free cooling windows — means Iowa data centers operate water-free for the majority of the calendar year.
“I like to refer to it as they’re really polluting my dark,” said David Roach, a West Des Moines-area resident quoted in a Wisconsin Public Radio report, describing the light coming from a nearby Microsoft campus. That is a legitimate concern about living next to a large industrial facility. But his complaint was about light and construction noise — not water. The residents who have lived alongside Iowa’s data centers for years have a range of opinions about them. Dramatic water shortages are not typically among their grievances.
So Why Did Social Media Get It So Wrong?
The short answer is that the national headlines about data center water use are real — they just describe a different problem in different places. A February 2025 report projected U.S. data center water consumption could quadruple by 2028, reaching 280 billion liters per year. In Texas, data centers are projected to consume 399 billion gallons annually by 2030. Those are staggering numbers. But they reflect facilities using outdated evaporative cooling technology in water-scarce regions, not the closed-loop and air-cooled systems that Iowa’s newer facilities predominantly use.
When a water alert hits close to home and a data center sits nearby, it is natural to connect the two. What is missing from that instinct is the local specificity — who uses what water system, where the water actually comes from, what cooling technology the facility uses, and what the utility itself says about capacity. That local specificity is exactly what the social media conversation skipped.
What the Data Centers Themselves Say About It
Iowa’s AI Future contacted city officials in Altoona, Waukee, West Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids as part of the reporting for this article. The responses were consistent across every community: data center water usage is understood, manageable, and in most cases entirely separate from the water supply concerns that prompted the CIWW conservation request. Not one official pointed to data centers as a strain on their system. Several pointed to lawn irrigation, agricultural runoff, or aging infrastructure as the actual pressure points.
The picture that emerges from those conversations — and from the public record in West Des Moines, where the data is most detailed — is not one of unchecked industrial water consumption. It is one of significant but managed summer usage, near-zero winter consumption, infrastructure investments made by the companies themselves, and water source arrangements that in at least one case have no connection to the municipal system at all.
Legitimate Questions Still Deserve Answers
None of this means data center development in Iowa is without real impacts. The concerns residents have raised — construction that runs for years, light that washes out the night sky, traffic on rural roads, and the concentration of a city’s tax base in facilities that could theoretically go dark — are worth taking seriously. This series will examine those questions in turn: energy costs and sources in part two, noise and community impacts in part three, and the economics of tax incentives and public revenue in part four.
Water, at least as it relates to the voluntary conservation request Iowans received this spring, is not the crisis it was made out to be. The Des Moines and Raccoon rivers had too much nitrogen in them. That is an agricultural story. Iowa’s data centers are a different story entirely — one that deserves accurate information on all sides.
Iowa’s AI Future is a newsletter and website covering artificial intelligence’s impact on Iowa business, agriculture, and education. Subscribe at IowasAIFuture.com. Have a tip or a correction? We want to hear from you.
Next in the Data Center Debate: Who pays for the power — and does data center development raise your electric bill?
