waterbycounty

Data centers and water

Data Center Water Use in El Paso County, CO

El Paso County, Colorado has 7 mapped data center facilities, including SAP, T5 Data Centers, Walmart, carrying about 77 MW of estimated power load.

SAPT5 Data CentersWalmart

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

El Paso County has no health violations in the last 5 years, abnormally dry conditions, low existing industrial water demand.

Mapped facilities
7
EPA + OpenStreetMap layers
Estimated power load
77 MW
IM3 Atlas capacity estimate
Permitted discharge
Not reported
Clean Water Act permit fields
DCWSI national rank
#108
of 318 scored counties

The operators

How many data centers are in El Paso County?

7 facilities are mapped to El Paso County, Colorado across the EPA and OpenStreetMap layers, run by operators including SAP, T5 Data Centers, Walmart. Counts reflect mapped footprint, not an operator's total fleet.

  • AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES INC - CO SPRINGS DATA CENTER

    COLORADO SPRINGS, CO

    EPA ECHO
  • FEDERAL EXPRESS - CO TECH

    COLORADO SPRINGS, CO

    EPA ECHO
  • OpenStreetMap data center 476609221

    08

    OpenStreetMap
  • SAP COS02

    SAP · 08

    OpenStreetMap
  • T5@Colorado Springs

    T5 Data Centers · Colorado Springs, CO

    OpenStreetMap
  • WAL-MART -COLORADO DATA CENTER #7497

    COLORADO SPRINGS, CO

    EPA ECHO
  • Walmart Colorado Data Center

    Walmart · 08

    OpenStreetMap

Supply versus demand

How much water do El Paso 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 El Paso 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
0.62 Mgal/day

Model a build

Can El Paso County support more data centers?

On the water-pressure scale, El Paso 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 El Paso County.

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

Your facility would use 128.5% of this county's industrial water baseline. Verify water rights and long-term drought projections before committing.

128.5% of county industrial baseline

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 El Paso County compare nationally?

DCWSI build-out rank
#108
of 318 counties with a stress score
Water pressure vs median
-9
national median is 19 of 100
Share of mapped load
0.0%
of 166.02 GW mapped nationally

El Paso 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