Arizona’s Water Is Vanishing Before AI Gets a Crack at It
Actual farms, not the data center variety, are sucking up groundwater more quickly than surface water from reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
Agriculture, not data centers, is the main culprit in draining the Colorado River basin.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
While we worry about the growing threat of robots guzzling up America’s groundwater, we can’t ignore the risk that cows will consume it all first.
A new study this week by researchers at Arizona State University put the depth of our water problem in perspective. It found that groundwater in the lower Colorado River basin — a region filling up with both data centers for artificial intelligence and alfalfa farms to feed cows — is being depleted far more quickly than surface water from reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which are also vanishing rapidly.