Data centers and water
Data Center Water Use in Maricopa County, AZ
Maricopa County, Arizona has 79 mapped data center facilities, including Google, Meta, Microsoft, carrying about 8.69 GW of estimated power load.
Water pressure for new demandHow hard a large new water user, like a data center, would press on this county's water. It blends recent drinking-water compliance, drought, and existing industrial demand. Higher pressure means new demand competes harder with current uses. It is not a judgment about whether one should be built.
Low water pressure
Maricopa County has no health violations in the last 5 years, moderate drought, moderate existing industrial water demand.
- Mapped facilities
- 79
- EPA + OpenStreetMap layers
- Estimated power load
- 8.69 GW
- IM3 Atlas capacity estimate
- Permitted discharge
- Not reported
- Clean Water Act permit fields
- DCWSI national rank
- #29
- of 318 scored counties
The operators
How many data centers are in Maricopa County?
79 facilities are mapped to Maricopa County, Arizona across the EPA and OpenStreetMap layers, run by operators including Google, Meta, Microsoft. Counts reflect mapped footprint, not an operator's total fleet.
- EPA ECHO
1301 W UNIVERSITY DR LLC
MESA, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
Accelera Data Systems
04
- OpenStreetMap
Alembic Computer Services, Inc.
04
- OpenStreetMap
Aligned Energy Data Center
Aligned · Phoenix, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
All About Serving Process Server
Chandler, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
Alliance Technology
Mesa, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
Apple Data Center
Apple Inc. · Mesa, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
Apple Mesa Data Center
Apple · 04
- EPA ECHO
APS - ALIGNED ENERGY DATA CENTER
Aligned · PHOENIX, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
AZ Labs
04
- OpenStreetMap
Centersquare: Phoenix - (PHX1 - Mesa)
Centersquare · Mesa, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
Cogent Data Center
Cogent Communications, Inc. · Phoenix, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
Comarch
Mesa, AZ
- EPA ECHO
COMPASS DATACENTERS PHX I
Compass Datacenters · MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ
- EPA ECHO
CYRUSONE - CHANDLER
CyrusOne · MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
CyrusOne PHX1
CyrusOne · Chandler, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
CyrusOne PHX3
CyrusOne · Chandler, AZ
- OpenStreetMap
CyrusOne PHX4
CyrusOne · Chandler, AZ
61 more mapped facilities counted in this county's score.
Supply versus demand
How much water do Maricopa County data centers use?
Exact facility water draw is rarely public. As a screening proxy we compare the Clean Water Act permitted discharge mapped to these facilities against the county's entire industrial water baseline from the USGS 2020 series.
No Clean Water Act permitted discharge is reported for the mapped facilities in Maricopa County. The figures below show the county's industrial water baseline for context.
- Mapped facility discharge
- Not reported
- County industrial baseline
- 12.9 Mgal/day
Model a build
Can Maricopa County support more data centers?
On the water-pressure scale, Maricopa County sits at 14, below the national median, so new large-load demand has more slack here than in most counties. Size a hypothetical build to see the daily draw against the county industrial baseline.
Data Center Water Budget Calculator
Estimate daily water use for a hypothetical facility in Maricopa County.
Your facility would use 6.2% of this county's industrial water baseline — manageable but worth monitoring against drought trends.
Based on USGS 2020 water-use data and EPA-standard cooling intensity constants. Not a substitute for site-specific water rights analysis.
In context
How does Maricopa County compare nationally?
- DCWSI build-out rank
- #29
- of 318 counties with a stress score
- Water pressure vs median
- -5
- national median is 19 of 100
- Share of mapped load
- 5.2%
- of 166.02 GW mapped nationally
Maricopa County is one of 330 US counties with mapped data centers. See the full ranking and the interactive map in the national atlas.
Facility data combines EPA ECHO, EPA Clean Water Act permits, OpenStreetMap, and the IM3 Open Source Data Center Atlas (DOE/PNNL), geocoded to county FIPS. Capacity and water baselines come from IM3 and USGS 2020 water-use data. These are county-level screening figures, not a facility-level water-use audit. Read the full methodology.