The Delaware River Valley has 66 active data centers of various sizes and 24 proposed; only one is a hyper-scaler
Liam Mayo with the River Reporter reports that “The Upper Delaware Council (UDC) hosted a presentation from the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) on Tuesday, March 31, with the DRBC providing updates on the research it has done into the effects of data center development.
The DRBC began researching the impacts of data centers after identifying them as an emergent issue, said DRBC Water Resource Scientist Amanda Khalil.
The Delaware River Valley would be a logical place for data center development, given its location midway between northern Virginia (an area already home to major data center development) and New York City, said Khalil; it’s not “unrealistic” to be planning for that type of development. While the DRBC has no approval or application for a data center at the moment, it would be “foolish” to think one wouldn’t cross the organization’s desk, she said.
In its research on data centers, the DRBC found 66 active data centers in the Delaware River Valley and 24 proposed. However, Khalil said, data centers can come in a range of shapes and sizes. She referenced a nine-point scale that started with a single room full of computers and ended with full-on “hyper-scalers,” the type of major project that’s making headlines nationwide.
With the exception of one proposed hyperscaler project down in Bucks County, located in the Lower Delaware River Valley, one of two facilities Amazon plans to locate in Pennsylvania, the data centers located in the Delaware River Valley are of the first seven types, which are much less concerning than the final two.
Of the nine classifications of data centers, the first seven currently exist within the Delaware River Valley; the last two do not.
Water, water everywhere.
The most substantial impacts data centers can have on their surrounding environments are their impacts on water and power resources. Data centers use significant amounts of water to cool the systems inside and significant amounts of electricity for power.
The direct effect data centers have on water supplies isn’t always easy to parse. According to Khalil, all the data centers the DRBC identified within the Delaware River Valley are connected to public water systems. These systems don’t like sharing data about individual water customers, to the point where non-disclosure agreements exist between data centers and public water systems.
The other end of the data center impact equation, the energy end, could wind up affecting water supplies as well, Much of the water withdrawn from the Delaware River gets used as part of energy generation. Khalil said that especially since the region is connected to [Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland] PJM (one of the largest power grids in the country), data center development even outside the Delaware River Valley could lead to increased water withdrawals for power generation purposes.
However, those projections for increased water withdrawals come at a time when water withdrawals have overall been declining for the Delaware River. According to the DRBC, the total water withdrawal from the Delaware River peaked at around 10 billion gallons per day in 2005 and decreased to 6 billion gallons per day in 2024. The consumptive water use within the river valley (the withdrawals that take from the river and don’t put the water back) has dropped slightly from 1.1 billion gallons per day in 1990 to 0.825 billion gallons per day in 2024.”
See the full story for more on what local and state leaders are doing to address the emerging land use challenges of data centers.