American water use has dropped – a lot

Over the past 40 years, the US has become a much more water efficient. Since water use peaked in the 1980s, the population has grown more than 45 percent. Yet the total water use has dropped by 20 percent. On a per person basis, water use is down about 40 percent.

This progress has less to do with lifestyle changes by American families than with industrial-level change in cooling thermo-electric plants and agricultural irrigation. Those are the big uses. But it also matters that Americans are using 70 percent less water per toilet flush.

Many are worried that the big data centers now being built to support artificial intelligence are major water consumers. They are. But they are very unlikely to overturn the trend in water efficiency.

Brian Potter of the Construction Physics newsletter notes that data centers, as of last summer, used about 66 million gallons per day. A lot of water, and the volume is expected to grow by two to four times. But for comparison, that is 6 percent of what US golf courses use, and 3 percent of the water used to grow cotton in this country.

Sources: USGS; “Construction Physics”