As Drought Deepens, Colorado Still Has No Rules For Data Center Water Use
By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
In Aurora, data center proposals run through a simple filter. City officials compare total water use against how much of that water won’t come back—lost to evaporation.
If either number gets too high, the project doesn’t move forward.
When a developer wants to build in Denver, there is no matrix.
That gap—two cities, two standards, nothing statewide connecting them—is the center of a question Colorado has avoided answering: who is responsible for knowing how much water AI data centers use, and when does that become too much?
The question got harder to ignore this spring. On March 16, Governor Jared Polis activated Phase 2 of the state’s Drought Response Plan—the first activation in nearly six years—after federal ...
