Danny Johnson, managing director of the Natural Resources Department at the Atlanta Regional Commission, told a Georgia House subcommittee in Douglasville that Metro Atlanta’s water system relies almost entirely on surface supplies and has seen per‑person water use fall by about one‑third since the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District was created.
Johnson said Metro Atlanta has more than 50 operating data centers and more than 40 proposed sites, and that the water impact of those projects “depends on the cooling technology that is used.” He described a range of consumptive water use between evaporative and closed‑loop cooling: “we've seen applications for evaporative cooling up to 9,000,000 gallons a day, whereas closed loop cooling usually needs far less than a 100,000 gallons a day.”
Johnson said the district’s approach is to continue monitoring proposals closely while giving local utilities and elected officials the information they need to evaluate tradeoffs. “Local utilities and local elected officials need to understand the challenges that data centers present and how these affect the community's long term plans,” he said, urging early coordination between developers and water providers and recommended that drought plans explicitly identify how industrial uses would be prioritized in emergencies.
The ARC presentation stressed that closed‑loop systems reduce consumptive loss but may raise energy use and cost, which in turn affects water demand for power generation. Johnson told legislators the district will update its regional water supply plan for 2028 and use that process to refine forecasts and any policy recommendations.
Committee members asked how frequently forecasts are updated; Johnson said the full planning update is every five years, with annual or biennial data gathering in between. He advised officials to plan for several population forecast scenarios so utilities will have contingencies if growth accelerates.
Why it matters: The Atlanta region is a national hub for technology and AI investments. Data center proposals are concentrated and could, depending on cooling choices and realization of proposed projects, alter timing and scale of municipal water needs. The ARC framed the immediate priority as better data, earlier coordination, and local planning rather than a single statewide mandate.