Amazon details water projects from Nevada to Spain as data centers draw scrutiny

What Amazon published

As aboutamazon.com reported, Amazon has put out a running update on how it is cutting water use and funding projects to ease water shortages. Our earlier summary noted the page had no figures. The full page does carry them, across projects in Nevada, Germany, Japan, Spain, India and Ohio.

This is the company's own account, not an outside audit. Most numbers are what Amazon expects projects to deliver once finished, so they are goals rather than measured results.

Reno: thinning forests to free up water

In northern Nevada, Amazon granted $1.1 million to The Nature Conservancy to help pay for the Alder 89 forest project near Truckee. The plan is to thin overgrown trees and brush across approximately 2,934 acres of U.S. Forest Service land. That lowers wildfire fuel, and it also saves water.

Dense plants pull water from the soil and release it into the air, a process called evapotranspiration. Fewer plants should leave more water for rivers and reservoirs downstream. Together with related forest and meadow work, this is expected to keep approximately 223 million gallons a year in the Truckee River watershed through 2035.

Amazon's estimated share is 42 million gallons. It compares that with the roughly 37 million gallons a year the fully built Reno data center campus is projected to use for cooling. The company says that is less than approximately 338 single-family households use, and about 0.1% of the Reno metro area's annual water use. It also commits to 100% recycled water for cooling there by 2029, pending regulatory approval.

Spain, Germany and Japan

The boldest claim comes from Aragón, Spain. Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud arm, says it is already replenishing more water than its direct data center operations use there. Two existing projects, on smarter crop watering and reuse of leftover irrigation water, give back more than 1 billion liters a year. That works out to around 15 liters returned for every 1 liter the data centers need.

A new €3.73 million project aims to go much further. It would replace 25 kilometers of open irrigation ditches with enclosed pipes, which cuts losses to evaporation and leaks. It would also add soil sensors, satellite images of crop needs and software that predicts when to water. The goal is to save more than 10 billion liters a year by 2030.

In Germany, Amazon is putting over €2.9 million into restoring wetlands across 40 hectares in the Vogelsberg region of Hesse, alongside Microsoft. The German nature group NABU is running it. Removing drainage and creating shallow water zones should let more rain soak into the ground. The project is expected to return more than 750 million liters a year to local groundwater, and Amazon's three German projects together are expected to return more than 920 million liters.

In Japan, thinning crowded forests in Chiba prefecture should return more than 170 million liters a year. A first project in Yamanashi is on track for over 130 million liters. A local forestry leader said of the work: "When forests thrive, water flows."

India and Ohio: campus fixes and wetlands

In Pune, India, a project on a 380-acre campus uses smart sensors, water-saving fixtures, wastewater recycling and groundwater recharge. It is expected to replenish an estimated 178 million liters a year once completed by the end of this year. Amazon says it has already reached its goal of returning 120% of the water it uses across its direct operations in India, ahead of its 2027 target.

In central Ohio, nearly $1 million will restore wetlands and grasslands across 66 acres along the Scioto River. These areas act as natural filters. They are expected to clean more than 72 million gallons of water a year and cut the nutrient runoff that feeds harmful algae.

Amazon says its Ohio data centers withdrew approximately 93 million gallons in 2025. It also says they run at a water use effectiveness of 0.06 L/kWh, meaning liters of water per unit of electricity, which it calls more than nine times better than the U.S. industry average.

How to read these claims

Two ideas get blurred in this kind of announcement. Using less water is different from replenishing it, which means funding projects that put water back into a local supply. A forest thinning project in one watershed does not change what a data center draws from another source. It can still help the same region.

The stronger claims name a place, a volume and a date, and these do. Even so, many are projections, and "returned" volumes come from the company's estimates. Independent measurement as projects finish would turn them into firmer evidence.