Skip to content

Monday, Jun 29, 2026

Could a new Denver data center use up to 800,000 gallons of water a day?

Cassis Tingley, The Colorado Sun
yes

The developer building a new data center in north Denver said the facility could use up to 805,000 gallons of water each day to cool its computer systems if all three planned buildings are constructed.

A single-family home uses roughly 200 gallons of water per day, according to Denver Water.

The developer, CoreSite, already operates two data centers in downtown Denver. It has faced criticism for lack of community engagement around the new facility, which could span up to 590,000 square feet at East 49th Avenue and Race Street, in a neighborhood with a long history of dangerous pollution. 

Data centers in Denver Water’s service area use less than 1% of the 180 million gallons of water its customers use daily.

In May, Denver passed a yearlong moratorium on new data centers and city officials declared that Denver is experiencing a Stage 1 drought, prompting watering restrictions. 

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.

See all fact briefs

The Colorado Sun is a journalist-founded, award-winning and nonprofit news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state — our community — can better understand itself. In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado. We are committed to fact-based, in-depth and nonpartisan journalism. We cover everything from politics and culture to the outdoor industry and education. Our goal is to produce the best possible journalism. We do that with the help of you, our readers, and community backers. We launched on Sept. 10, 2018.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.