Alfalfa grown in Arizona using Colorado River water. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

Global Rundown

  • A new study finds that groundwater withdrawals from the Colorado River basin have risen sharply over the past two decades, with cities like Phoenix forecast to reach depletion by century’s end. 
  • Prolonged drought around San Antonio, Texas, has prompted local authorities to require customers to cut their groundwater withdrawals nearly in half.
  • Global technology companies are eyeing Brazil for their newest data centers, despite recent years of drought and water scarcity. 
  • Montreal plans to invest $5 billion over the next 15 years to improve its sewage system, though how it will fund multiple large-scale projects remains to be seen.

The Lead

The municipality of Caucaia in northeastern Brazil, home to some 365,000 people, is familiar with water shortages: “In 16 of the 21 years between 2003 and 2024, a state of emergency due to drought was declared in the city at least once,” the Guardian reports. That includes a 2019 drought that depleted reservoirs and ruined crops, affecting some 10,000 people. 

Despite these trends and recent, devastating drought throughout the Brazilian Amazon, Caucaia is also the likely future home of a $9.7 billion supercomputer warehouse operated by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. 

The energy and water demands of such data centers have been well-reported, though the resource strain they place on communities depends on climate, capacity, and the extent to which sustainable technologies and practices are employed. In Caucaia, the data center has received a permit to pump 30 cubic meters of water each day “in a closed circuit, supplied by an artesian well,” while the company responsible for the project has vowed to use renewable energy in the form of green hydrogen.

Still, communities are wary of promises of sustainability. Of 22 data centers planned in Brazil, five would be located in areas “that have suffered recurring droughts and water shortages since 2003,” and companies including Microsoft and Google have admitted that significant amounts of their water usage occurs in areas around the world where the resource is scarce.

According to a recent study from researchers at the University of California Riverside, water withdrawals for AI globally are projected to be between 4.2 billion cubic meters and 6.6 cubic meters by 2027, which is roughly equal to Denmark’s withdrawals.

Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue

This Week’s Top Water Stories, Told In Numbers

27.8 million

Acre-feet of groundwater — “roughly the same volume as the total capacity of Lake Mead” — that have disappeared from the Colorado River basin since 2003, more than doubling the amount of water pumped from the region’s shrinking reservoirs during that same timespan, the Washington Post reports. A new study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters observes that these groundwater losses have been most pronounced over the past decade, most likely overlapping with unregulated pumping for agriculture, irrigation, and industry in places including western Arizona’s alfalfa fields. Withdrawals in the region over this past decade have been “three times greater than in the prior decade” and exacerbated by drought: the years 2000 to 2002 constituted one of the basin’s driest periods in more than a millennium. The Phoenix region is of particular concern to hydrologists, who forecast that even as Western states reduce their reliance on the Colorado River, groundwater in the area could be depleted by the end of the century. 

In Context: Dry Colorado River Forecast Gets Drier and The Drying American West

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Number of feet the J-17 index well near San Antonio has fallen below historic averages during central Texas’s ongoing drought, prompting the local aquifer authority to enact Stage 5 water restrictions that require “customers to reduce water withdrawal amounts by 44 percent,” KXAN reports. As of last weekend, water levels in the well had fallen to 624.7 feet for the first time since June 1990. The aquifer is on the cusp of breaking the all-time low set in 1956 during Texas’s most severe drought ever. The restrictions apply to “industrial and agricultural users, as well as water utilities authorized to pump water from the Edwards Aquifer for delivery to their respective customers,” according to an Edwards Aquifer Authority press release.

On the Radar

After decades of delaying investment in its water infrastructure and sewage system, Montreal will be investing CA$5 billion over the next 15 years to properly clean the wastewater the city currently flushes, largely untreated, into the St. Lawrence River. The Montreal Gazette reports that three separate projects — all of which are “overdue,” experts say — are planned or currently under construction: a CA$900 million ozonation plant that is poised to become the largest in the world; a CA$1.2 billion effort to replace incinerators that convert sewage sludge into clean ash; and a CA$2.5 billion biofiltration treatment system. 

The question of funding remains open. The city lacks a long-term monetary plan and “Quebecers are only funding 30 percent of the real costs of water infrastructure repairs and upgrades through their taxes.” The city may follow the lead of Toronto, which has installed water meters and consistently raised prices over the past decade such that the average homeowner in 2025 pays CA$1,078 annually in water taxes. In Montreal, “homeowners using a similar amount of water to the average Torontonian pay roughly CA$220 a year.”

Fresh: From the Great Lakes Region

New Climate Era: The past is no longer a reliable indicator for future climate patterns in the Great Lakes region, according to a new study published this week in the journal Communications Earth and Environment by researchers at the University of Michigan. Rapid temperature fluctuations, resulting in snap heat waves and freezing, have occurred in recent years across the Great Lakes. This behavior is likely to continue with greater intensity, affecting snow and ice cover and precipitation across one of the world’s largest sources of freshwater. Lake Superior has been identified in particular as “one of the fastest warming lakes in the world,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Meanwhile, the frequency of cold spells on Lake Erie has nearly tripled over the last 80 years. As a result of climatic changes, experts say the region’s fishing, shipping, and recreation industries are all increasingly vulnerable to environmental degradation, profit losses, and safety concerns.

White River and Prairie Creek Reservoir: About 70 percent of Muncie, Indiana’s water comes from the reservoir, which holds a capacity of 36,670 acre-feet of water and is also used by the city for recreation, as established by a deal that lasts until 2072, Indiana Public Radio reports. But the water quality has noticeably deteriorated in recent years, with officials noting an increase in algal blooms and cyanotoxins in the supply. As a first step, Indiana American Water will ban the use of ATVs and horse trails around the reservoir. The company may also reduce the number of adjacent docks and campsites. 

Bridge Michigan, Circle of Blue, Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television, Michigan Public and The Narwhal work together to report on the most pressing threats to the Great Lakes region’s water. This independent journalism is supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Find all the work here.

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer from Chicago. He is passionate about climate and cultural phenomena that often appear slow or invisible, and he examines these themes in his journalism, poetry, and fiction.