The Aquifer War
Michael Deppert farms pumpkins and soybeans in Tazewell County, Illinois, relying on a natural groundwater pool beneath his sandy soil. When a data center developer proposed a facility eight miles away, Deppert knew exactly what was coming: a direct tap on the same aquifer, water bills that would skyrocket, and crop yields that would crater. He and his neighbors didn’t just complain. They packed city council meetings, circulated petitions, and eventually killed the project outright. This is not an isolated skirmish. It is the frontline of a new American war.
According to Pew Research Center data, 67 percent of planned data centers are now being routed into rural areas, while 87 percent of existing ones remain urban. The math is brutally simple: cheap land, enormous tax breaks, and communities that lack the legal infrastructure to say no. Miquel Vila of Data Center Watch calls rural communities a “target.” They are exactly right. The tech industry sees farmland as an empty lot. But the people living there see it as their future.
The Power and Water Paradox
In DeKalb, Illinois, Meta is building a massive complex that is only “half built” according to local farmer Jamie Walters. The facility is permitted to draw 1.2 million gallons of water per day. DeKalb mayor Cohen Barnes cheerfully compares this to a university dormitory. But researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory forecast that by 2028, hyperscaler data centers will consume between 60 billion and 124 billion liters of water on site each year. Those figures do not even include the indirect water use from electricity generation, which could be twelve times higher.
Meanwhile, in Tucker County, West Virginia, a complex of gas-powered data centers has been proposed near the town of Davis. The local treatment plant can produce only 250,000 gallons per day, and it ran dry during a recent drought. Farmers relied on fire trucks to deliver water for their cattle. The proposed data center would require millions of gallons a day. Jim Kotcon of the Sierra Club’s West Virginia chapter says he is not opposed to data centers per se, but they must be “done right.” What “done right” actually means in a region where the well runs dry is something the industry has yet to answer. Closed loop cooling systems sound promising, but researcher Shaolei Ren from UC Riverside warns they increase electricity consumption by 25 to 35 percent in summer, simply shifting the burden from water to the regional power grid.
The Culture War Nobody is Talking About
This is not a left versus right issue. It cuts straight through the Republican base. Roughly 78 percent of US counties dependent on agriculture voted for Donald Trump in 2024 according to Investigate Midwest. Those same counties are now watching their water tables get drained for server farms. In Indiana, shots were fired at a local lawmaker’s home with a note reading “no data centers.” Even Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a staunch Republican, has warned that the unchecked spread of data centers onto prime farmland is a “real and growing threat to our food supply.”
Yet the industry keeps pushing. Data centers accounted for 80 percent of private sector growth in the US in the first half of 2025 according to S&P Global. The stock market is betting on that growth. But for every willing farmer like Jamie Walters who is leasing land for solar panels and selling renewable power to the tech companies, there is a Bob Stewart in Yorkville who watches his rich black soils get paved over and knows his kids will never farm them. The AI boom might be worth trillions. But it is being built on someone else’s water, someone else’s land, and someone else’s ability to breathe clean air. And that community is starting to organize.
Source: Arstechnica
