Resources · The hall
Forty-eight thousand, not seventeen
USGS last counted 48,525 billion gallons a year of thermoelectric withdrawals and 43,118 of irrigation. California almonds, on our reconstruction, are 1,355. US data-centre on-site water in 2023 was 17.4. The attached chart is true. It is also not the ledger.
- 01Thermoelectric USUSGS 201548,525
- 02Irrigation USUSGS 201543,118
- 03Public supply USUSGS 201514,235
- 04Industry USUSGS 20155,398
- 05Almonds (CA)2026 recon.1,355
- 06Golf (US)GCSAA 2024531
- 07Pools (US)path128
- 08Data centresLBNL 202317.4
- US data-centre on-site vs US irrigation
- 0.04%
- bn gal/year, US thermoelectric, USGS 2015
- 48,525
- bn gal, CA almonds, 2026 reconstruction
- 1,355
- bn gal, US data centres on-site, 2023
- 17.4
The infographic is a close-up
A shared linear axis of almonds, pistachios, golf, pools and racks is a good argument. It is not a census. USGS Circular 1441 still holds the last complete United States water-use count: 322,000 million gallons a day in 2015, of which thermoelectric power took 133,000 and irrigation 118,000. Converted to the same billion-gallon year the attached chart uses, those two lines are 48,525 and 43,118. California almonds, reconstructed at 3.0 acre-feet, sit at 1,355. Golf at the 2024 GCSAA print is 531. Data-centre on-site water is 17.4. Read that last number against irrigation and it is 0.04%. Read it against a well in Loudoun County and it can still kill a permit. Both readings belong on the desk. Only one of them belongs on a national ETF.
Withdrawn is not drunk
Thermoelectric ‘use’ is mostly once-through cooling: river in, river out, a few degrees warmer. Irrigation is mostly evapotranspiration plus tailwater. On-site data-centre water is a cooling tower that does not give the creek its gallons back. Comparing 48,000 to 17 is a category warning in both directions. It stops a slogan that AI will drain the West. It does not stop a county from running out of effluent. Pair with Data-centre water, in a field of almonds — the close-up — and The other two hundred and eleven billion — the power-plant water the census already counted as thermoelectric.
The long view is a well and a vintage
USGS has not published a 2020-class all-sector census that replaces Circular 1441 as a single table. Modelled 2010–20 work puts crop irrigation near 105,000 million gallons a day and freshwater thermoelectric near 83,000 — lower, not a different planet. Own cooling technology and wastewater contracts. Do not own a 2026 narrative that seventeen billion gallons is a national withdrawal event. The almonds, the fairways and the power plants already were.
Investing lens
Horizon 5–15 years · Educational, not advice
National water ledgers do not price a data-centre well. Local rights, reuse contracts and cooling kit do. Size the national chart as a veto on slogans, not as a short.
Where the map points
- Closed-loop and liquid cooling into AI halls
- Utilities with effluent or wet-sited megawatts
- Senior irrigation rights and SGMA-compliant land, not a national water ETF
- Avoid a desert evaporative campus with a peaker behind it
What can break it
- Treating 2015 USGS as a 2026 print
- A county aquifer that does not care about 48,000 billion gallons elsewhere
- Confusing withdrawals, consumption, and on-site evaporation
CHART does not recommend securities, funds or trades. Figures can be revised by their publishers. Do your own research and consider regulated advice before allocating capital.
Sources
Every headline number traces to a named publisher. Contextual sources inform the essay, not the key stat.
- 01PrimaryU.S. Geological Survey2018-06Estimated use of water in the United States in 2015
Dieter et al., Circular 1441. Last complete national census: 322,000 Mgal/d. Thermoelectric 132,944; irrigation 118,131; public supply 38,999; industrial 14,788. Converted in-house to bn gal/year × 365 / 1,000.
- 02PrimaryLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory2024-122024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report
Shehabi et al., LBNL-200163 / DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q. On-site US data-centre water 17.4 bn gal in 2023; direct 38–73 bn gal by 2028. Indirect (power-plant) ~211 bn gal in 2023; total 469–844 bn gal by 2028.
- 03PrimaryGolf Course Superintendents Association of America / USGA2025-12-30Golf courses reduce water usage by 31 percent according to national survey
2024 print: 1.63 million acre-feet applied = 531 bn gal. −31% vs 2005, −3.2% vs 2020. Peer-reviewed in HortTechnology (Shaddox et al. 2025).
- 04PrimaryUSDA National Agricultural Statistics Service2026California Almond Acreage Reports
Bearing acres: 1999 485,000; 2003 550,000; 2007 615,000; 2011 760,000; 2015 890,000; 2019 1.17m; 2023 1.38m. 2026 Land IQ 1,385,870; USDA subjective ~1.39m.
- 05ContextualUS Environmental Protection Agency, WaterSense2025How We Use Water
Household-equivalent arithmetic for LBNL’s 17.4 bn gal ≈ 160,000 homes. Pool top-off order of magnitude used to reconstruct the residential-pool series.
Keep reading
Data-centre water, in a field of almonds
Lawrence Berkeley counted 17.4 billion gallons of on-site water at US data centres in 2023. A 2026 path toward the lab’s 38–73 billion-gallon 2028 range still sits near 28. California almonds, from USDA acres at 3.0 acre-feet, sit near 1,355. US golf applied 531 in 2024. The campus can dry a local aquifer. It does not move a national ledger.
50×
CA almonds vs US data-centre on-site water, 2026 path
The other two hundred and eleven billion
On-site cooling is the political number: 17.4 billion gallons in 2023. The power plants that fed those racks used about 211 billion more. Data-centre water is mostly an electricity mix. Direct is the well. Indirect is the grid.
211
Billion gallons, US data-centre power-plant water, 2023
The power behind intelligence
Data centres used 485 TWh in 2025. The IEA’s base case still nearly doubles that by 2030 — and AI sites are growing three times as fast as the rest.
485 TWh
Data-centre electricity, 2025
429 parts per million
NOAA: the air at Mauna Loa averaged 429.12 ppm of CO₂ in July 2026. In 1959, when the Keeling curve began in earnest, it was 316. Pre-industrial air was about 280. This is the most important number on the desk.
429.12
Mauna Loa CO₂, July 2026 (ppm)