"For people trying to understand AI's impact on water supplies, scale matters.Compared with many other demands on water nationwide, today's data centers consume relatively modest amounts. Americans use more water to irrigate lawns, flush toilets and produce food — especially meat — than all U.S. data centers consume combined.The comparison becomes even more striking when looking only at the share of data-center water usage attributed to AI.The portion of data centers' cooling water attributed to just AI processing is less than the water used for one year's worth of golf-course irrigation, vehicle washing, residential swimming pools and restaurant dishwashing, based on estimates derived by government and industry.Those comparisons do not include the additional water associated with generating electricity. Nor do they mean AI's water use is insignificant. They just help place data center water usage within the many ways Americans consume the resource every day."cbsnews.com/projects/2026/how-#AI #DataCenters #Water #WaterUsage #Sustainability