New Claims on Old Water: Data Centers, Energy and Farmland

Every few months a company announces a project in the rural West and says it will use "less water than a golf course" or "the same as 300 homes." Sometimes that is true. The claim still tells you nothing about where the water comes from, whose water it was before, or what happens in a dry August. In a basin where every drop is already claimed, a new user's water has to come out of somebody's existing right.

This lesson connects this module to the data center and energy courses. For how cooling systems use water and what real campuses have reported, see the lesson "Water: Cooling, Aquifers and Reclaimed Supply" in Data Centers in Your Community. For power plants and their own water and land use, see the modules How the Power Grid Works and Alternative Energy: Hydro, Wind, Solar, Geothermal and Storage.

Three ways to get water

Each route also has a wastewater side. Cooling water discharged to a stream or sewer needs a permit or an agreement with the city's treatment plant, which brings in DEQ.

Why the old rights are worth so much

Priority. In the Eastern Snake Plain, the 2026 curtailment order applied to unmitigated ground water rights junior to October 11, 1900. A right applied for in 2026 is junior to every one of those. A company that needs water every day of every year cannot build on a right that may be shut off in a dry spring. So it buys old rights, or a mitigation arrangement, or service from a city that has them.

Then 42-222 applies. The director can approve the change only if it does not injure other rights, does not enlarge the original use, and is consistent with the state's conservation policy and the local public interest. Enlargement is the key test for a farm-to-factory move. A farm right that used water five months a year and let much of it return to the aquifer cannot simply become a year-round right that evaporates most of what it takes. Reviewers look closely at what the old right really consumed.

Land: zoning, permits and the plan

Large projects usually need a rezone to industrial, a conditional use permit, or both. Idaho Code 67-6512 lets a board attach conditions, including off-site public facilities, stricter standards and studies of environmental effects before a permit is granted. The comp plan's groundwater consideration under 67-6508(r) applies when a plan amendment is part of the package. The Land Use lesson in this module covers hearings, written decisions and appeal deadlines.

Energy projects on farmland

Solar fields, wind turbines, battery yards and transmission lines all compete for rural land. For many farm families a long-term lease is steadier income than crops, which is why some owners welcome it. Neighbors and farm groups worry about losing productive ground, about land that may not return to farming, and about water rights left unused (remember the five-year forfeiture clock in lesson 1, and ask whether the right will be leased, transferred or protected). Transmission is its own fight: comp plans must address national interest transmission corridors for lines of 115,000 volts or more once the PUC signals one is likely.

The case each side makes