As U.S. technology companies race to build and compete in the 21st century, many firms find themselves constructing more and more data centers as the demands of the virtual world continue to expand. Data centers, however, use a lot of water, with a single facility able to go through millions of gallons of water per day to keep equipment from overheating. Consequently, with water resources becoming more scare and the demand for cloud computing, provided by data centers, increasing, stakeholders will need to balance this tension by developing environmentally sustainable innovations as they create new data centers.

In the town of Dalles, Oregon, for instance, Google is trying to expand its already considerable data center infrastructure there in a sustainable fashion. Google hopes to build at least two more data centers in the town and part of the expansion proposal includes the possibly of an aquifer program to store water and increase supply during drier periods. The company is also seeking to make its data centers more efficient by recycling the same water several times through a center before discharging it and using treated sewage water, rather than drinking water, to cool one of its centers in Georgia.

Nevertheless, despite technology companies attempting to reduce their environmental impact, more consideration is needed. Indeed, a recent study showed that one-fifth of data centers rely on water from moderately to highly stressed watersheds. “They need to consider water impacts more seriously, and put the facilities in regions where they can be better sustained, both for the good of the environment and their own bottom line,” according to the study’s co-author Landon Marston, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech. “It’s also a risk and resilience issue that data centers and their operators need to face, because the drought that we’re seeing in the West is expected to get worse.” Read the full story at AP News.