Amazon helps water conservation along Colorado River
(NBC, KYMA) - As the Southwest's cherished Colorado River faces a growing crisis, Amazon announced Monday it is forming an alliance of corporations to bankroll fixes to canals, pipelines, and farms in the Colorado River Basin.
There are reports that the tech giant may be planning data centers in Mesa and Tucson, but Amazon says the effort is all about water conservation along the Colorado River Basin.
Canals, like the Central Arizona Project Canal running east to west through Peoria, Mesa and south to Tucson, bring precious water from the Colorado River, but it's a river in crisis.
"This is a new coalition of companies coming together to help the address the water challenges in the Colorado River Basin," said Will Hewes, Amazon's Lead on Water Stewardship.
Hewes shared more than 30 companies have partnered to fund conservation projects in Colorado River Basin communities.
"In some places, like California, we are doing a project to reduce leakage in water systems. In Arizona, we're funding work to help farmers become more efficient in their irrigation," Hewes explained. "Using technologies that tells them exactly when they need to irrigate for that crop, so its a range of different types of projects."
"Corporate leadership in these kinds of issues is really important and it often sets the tone for others," said Sarah Porter with Arizona State University's Kyl Center for Water Policy.
Porter said corporate initiatives, like Amazon's, are valuable because they send a signal to other companies to get involved.
She added for Amazon's projects to be worthwhile, they must be well coordinated to make sure saved water is stored and not wasted somewhere else.
"This can be very complicated," Porter expressed.
The move comes as corporations like Amazon rely more and more on data centers and artificial intelligence.
Data centers either use a lot of water onsite to cool their systems, or they use low or no water cooling technology, but Porter said those systems typically require a lot more power, and generating power often requires water, depending on how its produced.
So either way, data centers impact water.
Hewes was asked how Amazon is addressing water consumption caused by the data center boom.
"I just want to be really clear, this is not related to Amazon's data center operations at all because we don't have water cooled data centers Colorado River Basin or relying on Colorado River," Hewes remarked. "So we did start our water storage at work around the data centers and said you know...If you're thinking about energy you have to think about water to get together. We set goals to be water positive in our data center operation."
