waterbycounty

Data centers and water

Data Center Water Use in Los Angeles County, CA

Los Angeles County, California has 19 mapped data center facilities, including AWS, carrying about 120 MW of estimated power load.

AWS

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.

10/ 100

Low water pressure

Los Angeles County has no health violations in the last 5 years, no drought stress, high existing industrial water demand baseline.

Mapped facilities
19
EPA + OpenStreetMap layers
Estimated power load
120 MW
IM3 Atlas capacity estimate
Permitted discharge
Not reported
Clean Water Act permit fields
DCWSI national rank
#46
of 318 scored counties

The operators

How many data centers are in Los Angeles County?

19 facilities are mapped to Los Angeles County, California across the EPA and OpenStreetMap layers, run by operators including AWS. Counts reflect mapped footprint, not an operator's total fleet.

  • AMAZON DATA SERVICES, INC - LAX3

    AWS · LOS ANGELES, CA

    EPA ECHO
  • AMAZON DATA SERVICES, INC - LAX50

    AWS · LOS ANGELES, CA

    EPA ECHO
  • AMAZON DATA SERVICES, INC - LAX51

    AWS · EL SEGUNDO, CA

    EPA ECHO
  • AT&T

    Palmdale, CA

    OpenStreetMap
  • COGENT COMMUNICATIONS

    PASADENA, CA

    EPA ECHO
  • CoreSite - LA2

    CoreSite · Los Angeles, CA

    OpenStreetMap
  • DRT LAX10

    06

    OpenStreetMap
  • DRT LAX12

    Digital Realty · El Segundo, CA

    OpenStreetMap
  • Equinix

    Equinix · Torrance, CA

    OpenStreetMap
  • EQUINIX LLC

    Equinix · EL SEGUNDO, CA

    EPA ECHO
  • EQUINIX OPERATING CO INC. (LA1)

    Equinix · LOS ANGELES, CA

    EPA ECHO
  • GI TC ONE WILSHIRE

    LOS ANGELES, CA

    EPA ECHO
  • One Wilshire

    Los Angeles, CA

    OpenStreetMap
  • OpenStreetMap data center 424945736

    Centurylink · El Segundo, CA

    OpenStreetMap
  • OpenStreetMap data center 460212563

    Centurylink · 06

    OpenStreetMap
  • OpenStreetMap data center 495115494

    Los Angeles, CA

    OpenStreetMap
  • PRIME DATA CENTERS

    VERNON, CA

    EPA ECHO
  • Serverfarm - LAX1

    Serverfarm LLC. · El Segundo, CA

    OpenStreetMap

1 more mapped facility counted in this county's score.

Supply versus demand

How much water do Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles County. The figures below show the county's industrial water baseline for context.

Facility discharge vs county industrial water
Mapped facility discharge
Not reported
County industrial baseline
71.8 Mgal/day

Model a build

Can Los Angeles County support more data centers?

On the water-pressure scale, Los Angeles County sits at 10, 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 Los Angeles County.

1 MW1,000 MW
40%100%
799K gallons/dayLow Impact

Your facility would use 1.1% of this county's existing industrial water baseline — well within sustainable range.

1.1% of county industrial baseline70.96 Mgal/day remaining headroom

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 Los Angeles County compare nationally?

DCWSI build-out rank
#46
of 318 counties with a stress score
Water pressure vs median
-9
national median is 19 of 100
Share of mapped load
0.1%
of 166.02 GW mapped nationally

Los Angeles 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.

By Evan Brooks, Data EditorPublished Reviewed by Evan Brooks, Data Editor