Google’s massive data center in Pryor is the company’s second-largest in the world and an important part of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure. But it takes a lot of water to keep the data servers cool. The Pryor center used more than 1.1 billion gallons of water in one year, enough to fill about 1,666 Olympic-size swimming pools, water utility records show.

Google gets its water from the Neosho River through the state-owned MidAmerica Industrial Park.

The Frontier obtained Google’s water usage from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, through an open records request. The company discharged about 253 million gallons of wastewater back into the Neosho River during that same time period. The rest of the water is lost through evaporation during and after it cools servers.

MidAmerica Industrial Park has a permit from the Oklahoma Water Resources Board to withdraw up to 27.375 billion gallons of water per year. Google was the park’s second-largest water user last year, behind Associated Electric Cooperative, which sells power to members in Oklahoma, Missouri and Iowa.

“Considering MidAmerica’s current water usage by existing customers and anticipated increases in demand, the contracted GRDA supply and available treatment capacity are adequate to meet foreseeable water requirements,” said Nathan Cross, attorney for MidAmerica Industrial Park.

With at least 10 new data centers either under construction or awaiting government approval across Oklahoma, residents in many towns are worried about what the tech boom will do to the local water supply. Google alone has announced five new data center projects in Oklahoma within the past few months.

Meanwhile, water demand in the state is expected to grow by 18% over the next 20 years, fueled by population growth and urban expansion, according to the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.

“The new and emerging users, such as data centers, will contribute to the strain depending on how data centers source water,” Yohanes Sugeng, an engineer for the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, told state lawmakers at a study session in October 2025.

The agency predicts that by 2075, projected demand will exceed the available surface water supply for permitting in some areas of the state, including the Oklahoma City and Tulsa areas.

But cities say they have enough water to meet immediate demand. And data center developers are paying for infrastructure upgrades and are looking at ways to reduce water usage in the future.

Google said in a statement that it aims to replenish more fresh water than it consumes by 2030 and is supporting projects in the state to support the health of the region’s water supply, though the projects are in different watersheds from where its Pryor facility pulls water. Those projects include repairing a water line in a rural community and a program to improve agricultural irrigation in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

— Local officials say data centers won’t strain resources How much water a data center uses depends on a variety of factors, including the type of cooling system, the local climate and the size and type of computing the facility does.

Project Anthem, a massive data center development planned for east Tulsa, is projected to use up to 1 billion gallons of water annually, while Project Clydesdale in north Tulsa County is expected to use up to 2.2 billion gallons of water a year.

But Oklahoma is also home to many smaller data centers that use a fraction of the water that these larger developments are expected to use.

A study conducted by state officials in Virginia in 2023 found that on average, data centers there used between 4 million and 10 million gallons of water annually, about the same amount as an average large office building.

Some Oklahoma towns where data centers are planned have seen recent rate increases for water, but local officials say these are unrelated to the new developments. Some data center developers have promised to pay for water infrastructure improvements for communities and plan to use new technology, they say will allow them to use less water.

Google estimates it will eventually use nearly 3 billion gallons of water a year for six data centers under development in Stillwater, according to Payne County Commissioner Rhonda Markum.

The City of Stillwater began raising water rates by up to 3% a year starting in 2024. The price increases are set to run through 2028, and will help cover the growing cost of service and infrastructure improvements. It doesn’t have anything to do with Google, city officials said. Stillwater officials said the town also has plenty of water. Stillwater can withdraw up to 50 million gallons per day from Kaw Lake, but only uses between 7 million to 14 million gallons. The city is also building a new water line from Lake McMurtry, providing it with a second water source.

The City of Muskogee, which is home to two existing data centers and near two proposed new Google data centers, has also recently raised its water and other utility rates 2.2%, plus a $7.75 monthly sewage service rate increase. The money will help fund a new wastewater treatment plant, and the increases are related to plans for new data centers, said Judy Villalobos, a spokesperson for the city. Muskogee would have been capable of handling the wastewater discharge from those data centers without a new plant, she said.

In Coweta, where construction on a new $800-million data center called Project Atlas is underway, developer Beale Infrastructure has offered to build a new wastewater treatment plant for the city.

In some cases, data centers have promised city officials that the increased utility revenue from the data center’s water usage would fund upgrades to public infrastructure.

Polaris Technologies, a cryptocurrency mining center in Muskogee, proposed such an arrangement to city officials there. In an Oct. 30, 2023, email exchange between Polaris Technologies CEO Alex Zhang requested a meeting with city officials discuss the city extending a water pipe for the data center.

“We’ll be one of the largest customers of the city water so we believe (the) city can make revenue from our operations to cover the extension cost,” Zhang wrote.

Zhang did not respond to a request for comment. Polaris used about 150 million gallons of water between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, utility records show.

— Some data centers seek to reduce water usage While most large-scale data centers in the United States utilize water-cooled systems, some are looking at ways to reduce water usage. At least four proposed data centers in Oklahoma have also recently announced they plan to use “dry” systems, which use air to cool servers. Some data centers also use hybrid cooling or “closed loop” systems that decrease water usage. The type of cooling system a data center decides to use depends on a host of factors, such as the climate where the facility is located, access to water and power and the type of computing the center will be doing.

Data center developer Beale Infrastructure recently said that it would use an air-cooled system at the planned Project Atlas facility in Coweta. The announcement came after the project met with pushback from the community, including criticism that it would use up to 5.4 million gallons of water per day.

During a public meeting on the proposed data center project at the Claremore Industrial Park, Project Mustang, Beale representatives announced that the project would also utilize an air-cooled system.

But there are some trade-offs.

Air-cooled systems typically require significantly more electrical energy than water-cooled systems. Developers may face a choice to use more electricity or decrease the computing power of the data center.

For the Coweta project, Beale development director Lauren Harvey said the facility will divert some of its power away from computing processes and toward the air-cooled system.

Air-cooled systems are also noisier. During the Claremore meeting, Harvey said the company plans to enclose the large fans used to pull outside air into the system and install sound dampeners on them to keep the noise level to 55 decibels at the property line, about the same level as a normal conversation.

Developers for Project Spring, the planned Google data center in north Sand Springs, announced recently that the facility would use a dry cooling system, at least in the initial phases of the project, limiting water use to kitchen and bathroom functions.

But it’s unclear how that could change in future phases of the development.

“As the campus evolves, any future cooling and/or water demand decisions will be made in close coordination with the City of Sand Springs to ensure the project aligns with the City’s stated availability and prioritize the needs of local residents,” the announcement read.

Kate Franco, public affairs manager for Google’s Oklahoma data centers, refused to answer questions from The Frontier about the Sand Springs project or any of Google’s planned or existing data centers in the state.

A second planned Google data center, just northeast of Council Hill in Muskogee County, also appears to be setting up to use a less water-hungry cooling system. The project, which falls within Muskogee’s Rural Water District #3, anticipates only needing around 20,000 gallons of water per day, or about 0.6% of the average amount of water the Pryor facility consumes daily, said water district vice-chair Howard Whatley.

The water district, which has around 650 members total, also signed an agreement with Google that requires the company to pay for any required upgrades to the water district’s infrastructure that would be required as a result of providing service to the facility, Whatley said.

Whatley said the water district has rejected applications in the past where a potential user wanted to withdraw large amounts of water, but the approximately 20,000 gallons per day for the Google project is doable.

“We’re not going to take water away from citizens for a project like that,” Whatley said. “That wouldn’t be neighborly.”

— This story was published by The Frontier, an Oklahoma journalism nonprofit, and is republished in partnership with The Frontier.