Liberato Aguilar

June 2026 · Borderplex water

Data Centers and Water on the Border: Myth, Reality, and What We Still Don't Know

A practical explainer on AI data centers, water claims, and the difference between real risk and easy slogans.

If you live in El Paso, Las Cruces, or Juárez, you've probably already heard: two enormous AI data centers are landing on the border (Meta in Northeast El Paso, Project Jupiter across the line in Santa Teresa) and they're going to drink our desert dry.

You've probably also heard AI companies say: don't worry, it's all "closed-loop," the water gets used once and recycled forever, and it'll never touch your tap.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. I wanted to write this article to clear up some common misconceptions about AI water use, which is especially relevant in El Paso today. So let's actually look at how this works.

First: Why data centers need water

A data center is a building full of large computers that run hot. To keep them from cooking themselves, you have to move that heat somewhere, and water is very good at carrying heat. The other place water comes in is electricity generation for the computations those computers run. Both uses are described below:

1. Direct water. The water used on-site to cool the building. This is the number everyone argues about.

2. Indirect water. The water used somewhere else to generate the electricity the data center consumes. Power plants, especially the kind that burn fuel to make steam, use a lot of water too. That matters here, because Meta's El Paso center will be powered in part by a brand-new natural gas plant. The plant burns gas to boil water, which generates steam that powers the electric generators.

Keep both in mind, because most of the headlines focus on cooling only.

Consumption explains the buzz

Withdrawal is how much water a facility takes from the system. Consumption is how much it doesn't give back, meaning water that evaporates into the air and leaves the local supply. We all know from the water cycle that it will eventually rain down, but there is no guarantee that it will rain down anywhere near El Paso, so we consider that evaporated water lost locally.

Imagine 1,000 gallons going into a typical evaporative cooling system. About 700 to 800 of those gallons evaporate away. That portion is consumed. The other 200 to 300 leave as wastewater that can be treated and reused in the city's water supply. With these headlines, it is important to distinguish consumption from withdrawal.

A typical home consumes maybe 5% to 15% of the water it withdraws. An evaporative-cooled data center can consume up to 80%. It sounds like a large number, but that's just how cooling by evaporation works at a large scale.

Cooling design

Almost every misconception traces back to how a given data center is cooled.

Evaporative cooling is the most common approach in hot, dry climates. Very energy efficient, but it works by evaporating water, so it consumes a lot of it. Cheap on power, expensive on water. Water vapor can't be recycled because the whole idea is that it moves the hot air into the atmosphere away from the data center.

Closed-loop cooling is where water circulates through sealed pipes and is reused instead of evaporated. This consumes less water, but the corporate PR usually skips a key detail: many "closed-loop" systems still use external cooling towers that do evaporate water. So water is not just filled once and used forever.

Air (dry) cooling uses almost no water on-site, but it uses more electricity, which can be generated by, you guessed it, evaporating water. It is a trade-off for indirect water consumption.

Reclaimed water is where some operators (Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) cool with recycled, non-potable water so they're not competing with your kitchen sink. In a dry region this is one of the most meaningful things an operator can do, but only if they actually do it.

Mythbusting

Myth #1: "It'll drain the aquifer." Meta's El Paso facility is estimated to use up to about 1.5 million gallons a day by one source (El Paso Matters) and as much as 2.5 million by city projections (via KTEP) once fully built. For scale, El Paso Water supplies around 110 million gallons on a typical day and can pump up to 157 million, and the utility's leaders have said repeatedly that they can reliably meet the demand. There is no immediate risk of draining the aquifer. The legitimate worry is the long-term water draw in a desert, and who pays to build the water infrastructure down the line.

Myth #2: "It's all closed-loop and it'll never touch our drinking water." Project Jupiter says this is their goal. The problem is that those specific claims came from a developer-funded PR campaign and haven't held up to independent scrutiny. Doña Ana County itself has formally asked the project for answers about its water use. Even Meta, which is more transparent, describes truly "zero-consumption" cooling as a future goal (2030). It is important to keep the developers accountable.

Myth #3: "Water used is water gone forever." Not necessarily. The portion that leaves as wastewater can be treated and reused. El Paso is building an aquifer storage and recovery facility to pump cleaned water back into the Hueco Bolson.

Unique desert challenge

Everything above is true anywhere. Here it's even more difficult. We depend on aquifers like the Hueco and Mesilla Bolsons and the shrinking Rio Grande. Heat drives cooling demand up. And as one El Paso Water board member put it, the issue isn't really a lack of water. It's a lack of cheap water. Reclaiming, treating, and piping it all costs money that can land on residential bills.

What we know, and what we don't

We know Meta discloses its water use annually, pays its own water and wastewater costs, has a 200% restoration pledge and other aquifer projects in motion, and is permitted up to a daily maximum for water use. Jupiter's developers have committed $50 million toward water and wastewater infrastructure.

We don't know Jupiter's exact cooling design and real water numbers, how peak-summer demand actually plays out, the cumulative effect of multiple large users, and how much of the water will be potable versus reclaimed.

Five questions to ask before you read water headlines

  1. Is this withdrawal or consumption?
  2. Is this direct or indirect?
  3. Is this potable or reclaimed water?
  4. Is "closed-loop" cooling actually zero-evaporation?
  5. Who's the source?

Where I stand

As a software engineer, I use AI tools every day, and I live here too. I want the borderplex to win the AI moment and keep its water. These projects can be very beneficial to the local economy if they are managed correctly and kept accountable. They're a serious topic that deserves specific questions instead of PR promises, and the more of us asking the right ones, the better the outcome for all of us.

Have a question about the data centers, or about how AI actually affects your business? Reach out and ask me.

Sources

Last updated June 2026. Several local items (the gas plant approvals, the council's incentive vote, Jupiter's water disclosures) are still developing. Check for updates before relying on specifics.