Two Virginia state senators have written a bipartisan letter asking the state’s governor to call a special session on the state’s groundwater supply due to “serious and immediate strain,” partly due to data centers.

The letter, penned by Republican Richard Stuart and Democrat Russet Perry, comes after the release of a report by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which assessed the future impact of groundwater from “newer industries such as data centers” by hypothesizing “a withdrawal of three million gallons per day at the centroid of each ground-water budget region.”

The senators claimed lawmakers had not been able to consider the report as it was released after the current year’s legislative session had ended and the state’s budget had been implemented.

The report said data centers have the potential to “significantly impact groundwater resources, and it is essential to evaluate the historical, current, and potential future impacts of such activities on the Commonwealth’s groundwater supply.”

Based on estimates from Fairfax County, Virginia, data centers use approximately 90 to 100 gallons (341 to 379 liters) of water per day per 1,000 sq ft (92 sqm). This corresponds to an estimated three million gallons (13.6 million liters) of water per day for an IT load of around 1GW and 31.6 million sq ft (2.93 million sqm).

The report noted a typical hyperscale data center with 100MW of capacity would be expected to use around 300,000 gallons (1.1 million liters) of water per day.

The actual use of water by a data center will vary, depending on a number of design and operational factors. While many older facilities relied on evaporative cooling that requires large volumes of water, many newer facilities are opting for closed-loop systems, which recirculate water. Some facilities, including several in Virginia, use wastewater for their cooling systems.

Calls mount for a pause in Virginia

Last week, another Virginia state senator, Republican Glen Sturtevant, called on Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger to issue an immediate statewide moratorium on new data center developments.

In a letter to the governor, Sturtevant said the rapid growth of data center proposals in Chesterfield County had brought the issue into “sharp focus” for the residents he represents, but added that the “consequences of Virginia’s data center expansion extend far beyond any single locality.”

Virginia is currently, by and large, the biggest data center market in the world, with somewhere in the region of 11GW of operational capacity and 200 facilities in Loudoun County alone.

Quoting a report from Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC), Sturtevant said data center growth is the primary driver of the forecast that Virginia’s electricity demand could double within ten years.

“Virginia has no credible plan to meet the enormous new demand reliably and affordably,” he said. “The question is no longer simply how to regulate more data centers. It is whether Virginia can accommodate data center development at all.”

According to local news, another senator, Democrat and Virginia state senate president pro tempore Louise Lucas, came out in agreement with Sturtevant, stating that the “status quo cannot continue.”

“A statewide moratorium is a serious proposal that deserves serious consideration,” Lucas added.