Elizabeth Partin never imagined she’d be living up the road from a data center when she moved to Ridgeland, Mississippi, last summer. The facility was just a construction site back then, and it wasn’t until the fall that she learned what was being built less than a mile from her new subdivision.
Since then, Partin says she and her neighbors have struggled to find concrete information about the nearby data center. She voiced frustration at the ongoing secrecy around the project and its potential impacts—especially in one area.
“I hope our water systems aren’t impacted,” she said, “because that affects everybody.”
Earlier this year, Amazon announced that its unfinished data center in Ridgeland—a city of 25,000 just north of Jackson—would use an estimated 93 million gallons of water per year. The vast complex will power artificial intelligence and cloud computing services, and the water is meant to keep the site cool on the hottest days of the year.
But a private agreement between the tech giant and the city could theoretically allow Amazon to use up to 14 times more water annually, with no other guidelines or restrictions around everyday usage.
The agreement, obtained by the Mississippi Free Press through a public records request, authorizes Amazon to withdraw as much as 3.67 million gallons a day from Ridgeland’s water system—enough to fill nearly 30 million standard water bottles. The lack of guardrails or enforcement mechanisms beyond that threshold means that Amazon has no obligation to abide by its water use estimates when the data center becomes active, experts who reviewed the contract say.
“There’s a massive range of water use that could occur on a daily basis,” said Haley Gentry, the assistant director at the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy. “There’s no way of knowing until (the data center is) operational, which is why these agreements are such a big issue.”
The 45-page agreement signed last year is a rare look at a deal struck between a data center operator and local utility providers. More often, operators have managed to shield water use figures behind non-disclosure agreements and exemptions to public records law. As such, the deal in Ridgeland offers a window into what tech companies and utilities are promising each other in writing—and where those written promises end.
Exactly how much water Amazon will be permitted to use in Ridgeland is just one question left unanswered by the agreement, Gentry and other experts say. They worry the millions of gallons of wastewater produced by the site could threaten fragile sewer infrastructure in neighboring Jackson, Mississippi. They also fear that the massive utility expansion needed to accommodate Amazon could strain city budgets if the data center fails.
That could mean service disruptions and inflated water bills for Ridgeland’s existing utility customers, who already experienced water and sewer rate increases earlier this year. Some nearby residents worry their quality of life could suffer if services are regularly compromised.
Amazon itself predicts that annual water usage in Ridgeland will be comparable to what roughly 800 households in surrounding Madison County would consume in a year. In response to questions about the private agreement, the company stressed that the 3.67 million-gallon-a-day figure represents peak water use under extreme circumstances and does not reflect expected daily usage at the data center.
“Under no scenario would our operations consume water at the expense of residential access,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement. “The City of Ridgeland retains full authority over its water system, and our facilities can reduce demand in real time—our sites are engineered with on-site storage and recycling to curtail withdrawals if needed. Our allocation is subject to the same curtailment provisions as any commercial user; residential service is prioritized by the city, and we operate within that framework.”
Betting on Technology
Amazon’s Ridgeland campus is part of a planned $25 billion investment in the Magnolia State, encompassing four data center projects across three counties and funding for infrastructure and workforce development programs. Since breaking ground in Madison County two years ago, the company has announced various strategies for preserving the area’s natural resources, like using treated wastewater rather than drinking water at some of its locations.
In Ridgeland, however, Amazon will use the city’s groundwater supply to meet its water needs. That means it will draw from the same network of pipes and underground aquifers as other local businesses and residential utility customers.
The tech giant is investing $37 million in the local water system to support its operations, adding new wells, service lines and other features that will expand capacity by more than 23% next year, according to company estimates. The expansion is slated for completion by 2028, and city officials say the upgrades will benefit Amazon and residential users alike.
“They have given us everything we’ve asked for, and we demanded a lot,” said Alan Hart, Ridgeland’s public works director, noting that Amazon has effectively funded 30 years’ worth of water system advancements. “We got really lucky by having Amazon as a partner.”
While larger data centers have typically used water—and lots of it—to cool the thousands of servers inside the facilities, operators are adopting new technologies to improve their efficiency and allay concerns over water consumption. In Amazon’s case, the company uses outside air to cool its data centers for much of the year, pumping it into the buildings and passing it through the server racks before releasing it back outdoors.
But when temperatures outside exceed 85 degrees, Amazon sends the air through water-soaked pads to cool before it reaches the servers—an approach known as direct evaporative cooling.
“Oftentimes, data centers will use a variety of technologies” for hardware cooling, said Alexandria Nelson, the director of the Environmental Law Institute’s Digital Economy and Environment Program. “It’s quite rare that they’ll stick to just one, because it depends so much on what the temperature is doing outside.”
The trouble with relying on direct evaporative cooling in Mississippi, Nelson explained, is that the air outside is already saturated with moisture for most of the year. That could make it harder for Amazon to control temperatures at its data centers without expending more water or energy, especially as the region becomes hotter and more humid.
“Direct evaporative cooling, as described for this project, relies on the air’s capacity to absorb moisture, and that’s a capacity that’s essentially exhausted in more humid climates,” she said. “We know that these systems are far less efficient” in places like Ridgeland.
In its written statement, Amazon noted that its water use forecasts for the Ridgeland campus are based on climate modeling that accounts for hotter-than-typical years. The company’s data centers in the region use outside air for cooling 91% of the year, a spokesperson said, and its facilities have improved their water efficiency by more than 50% over the last five years.
Should Amazon require more water than expected at the Ridgeland campus, however, its private agreement with the city gives the company wide latitude to meet that higher demand. The agreement does not limit withdrawals beyond the 3.67 million-gallon daily peak, nor does it require Amazon or city officials to disclose if usage exceeds current projections.
“There’s no binding language that would prevent Amazon from using the peak more regularly” than what the company has shared in its statement, said Tulane University’s Haley Gentry. Amazon is adding millions of gallons in new capacity to Ridgeland’s water system to accommodate the data center, she explained, and the absence of reporting requirements could make it easy for the company to surpass its water use estimates without the public’s knowledge.
Alan Hart, Ridgeland’s public works director, dismissed the possibility that Amazon could wind up using more water than expected at the data center, noting that the complex has specific protocols to limit withdrawals in times of high demand. Ridgeland will be using meters to monitor water flow in and out of the campus, he said, and officials can set alarms to ensure usage doesn’t strain the system or violate the agreement.
“They do not want our system to fail,” Hart said. “If our system fails because of them, they get a global black eye, and they don’t want that.”
Infrastructure Fears
Ridgeland’s water system will be the engine behind Amazon’s evaporative cooling tech, but the city of Jackson will also play a role in the data center’s operations. Per the private agreement shared with the Mississippi Free Press and interviews with Ridgeland officials, water released by the site will be transported from Ridgeland to the Savannah Wastewater Treatment Plant in South Jackson.
Once there, it will undergo disinfection and other treatment services before being discharged into the adjoining Pearl River.
Data center wastewater can contain a range of contaminants, from treatment chemicals and concentrated minerals to heavy metals like copper or nickel. These pollutants tend to be especially concentrated in water cycled through evaporative cooling systems, experts explained, making it essential to thoroughly treat the wastewater before releasing it into waterways like the Pearl.
With evaporative cooling systems like the one used in Ridgeland, “the wastewater utility needs to be prepared to treat that higher volume of water with a higher (concentration) of contaminants in it,” said Alexandria Nelson of the Environmental Law Institute. The utility must also evaluate “whether or not they would need a significant infrastructure upgrade to handle a new wave of contaminants, especially if they’re helping to return that (wastewater) into a potable water source.”
For decades, Jackson’s wastewater treatment system has been plagued by breakdowns and deficiencies, culminating in an August 2022 crisis that left over 150,000 residents without drinking water. While JXN Water, the city’s current water utility provider, has overseen some critical repair work since taking over operations in 2023, experts worry an influx of sewage from the Ridgeland data center could imperil the system once again.
“Jackson is probably the last city I would pick to take in added industrial wastewater until it can manage its own water infrastructure,” said Tulane University’s Haley Gentry, noting that the city has yet to complete the large-scale improvements needed to shore up its aging sewer system.
JXN Water, a private company that is not subject to Mississippi’s public records laws, did not comment for this story.
Under the terms of the private agreement, Jackson will accept a peak of 1.84 million gallons of wastewater per day from the Ridgeland data center. While Amazon is spending nearly $40 million to expand Ridgeland’s water system and prevent service disruptions, their agreement makes no mention of funds allotted for Jackson’s wastewater treatment system.
Alan Hart, Ridgeland’s public works director, said Jackson can accommodate peak wastewater discharge from the data center with its existing infrastructure. However, JXN Water is requiring Amazon to retain some wastewater on site and release it at specified rates to avoid overwhelming the city’s treatment facilities, he added.
Risking Future Costs
While Amazon is covering most of the water system upgrades in Ridgeland, part of the expansion is being paid for with local, state and federal dollars, the private agreement obtained by the Mississippi Free Press shows. This includes a $3.6 million American Rescue Plan Act grant awarded to Ridgeland and a $1.2 million contribution from the city itself, according to supplemental documents shared by the mayor’s office.
Additionally, the agreement makes the city solely responsible for maintaining and repairing the system once the improvements are completed, raising questions about how those costs will be allocated moving forward.
Hart said Ridgeland will cover maintenance and repair work for the upgraded system through standard budgeting processes. Amazon’s projected water usage is small relative to the system’s new capacity, he explained, and the city is appropriately staffed to handle the uptick in demand.
“Just because we have all this new infrastructure, we don’t expect our costs to substantially increase,” he said. “It’s not going to be a big budget change.”
Experts warn that costs could pile up, however, if Amazon decided to shut down the data center—a growing concern in an industry facing significant uncertainty and rapid technology advancements. That could leave Ridgeland and its utility customers tending to the expanded water system without the tech giant’s rate payments or tax revenue, Gentry explained.
“The way this agreement is structured really limits (Amazon’s) liability beyond the upfront costs,” she said. “If they build all this, and then now you have this massive expansion of the system for a town of 25,000 people, that would be really, really concerning going forward.”
Ridgeland officials do not expect the first buildings at Amazon’s data center campus to come online until December or later. Until then, the agreement between the two parties offers the clearest picture of potential water use at the site, Gentry said.
“I think that’s where a lot of the concern (lies),” she concluded, highlighting how other data center operators have leaned on non-disclosure agreements to hide the full extent of their water needs from the public. “If it’s not going to be that bad, great. But why doesn’t anyone know what the actual plan (and) the long-term impacts are?”
For Elizabeth Partin, whose new home and backyard are a short drive away from Amazon’s data center, the idea of contributing to a project that could have lasting consequences for her community doesn’t sit right.
“It feels dirty,” she said. “I understand economic pushes and things like that, but you can’t do it at the deficit of the humans living here.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of data centers and read past stories here.
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