Fayetteville, GA: A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed -- until residents complained about low water pres

[Eugene]

Source: Politico

A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure

By Arianna Skibell
05/09/2026 02:00 PM EDT

The neighbors of a data center in Georgia are steaming after they discovered the facility had sucked up nearly 30 million gallons of water — without initially paying for it.

Outrage started bubbling up last year when residents of an affluent subdivision named Annelise Park in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed their water pressure was unusually low.

When the county utility investigated, officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.

All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water. That is equivalent to 44 Olympic-size swimming pools and far exceeds the peak limit agreed to during the data center planning process.

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Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/georgia-data-centers-water-00909988