Loudoun’s Recycled Water Covers 43% of Data-Center Use. Treatment Capacity Sets the Limit.

Loudoun County’s data centers used about 200 million gallons of recycled water each day in 2025, equal to 43% of their daily water use. The remaining 260 million gallons, or 57%, came from potable supplies, according to Loudoun Water.

Those figures make Loudoun a useful test of what water reuse can and cannot do for data-center cooling. The county has more than 250 data centers and plans for at least another two dozen. Recycled supply can partly reduce demand for drinking water, but it depends on the wastewater system available around a site.

The water has to be processed first

The supply is treated wastewater and sewage, not untreated material sent into cooling equipment. Recycled water has long been used to cool industrial facilities and is already used at data centers. In evaporative cooling, hot air passes through water and loses heat as that water evaporates.

Processes used for industrial reuse

• Membrane bioreactors can be part of treatment for industrial reuse.
• Reverse osmosis can be used to further treat wastewater.
• Ultraviolet light can also be part of the treatment process.

That industrial process is the real version of a recent joke campaign by Liquid Death and Garage Beer, featuring Jason Kelce, that asked people to donate urine to cool AI data centers. Wastewater must be treated before it becomes a usable cooling supply.

A plant’s size can shape a site’s water options

For a data center to use recycled water at high volumes, it needs a nearby wastewater-treatment facility that processes enough water to supply it. Rural sites can run into a harder limit: their treatment plants may not handle enough wastewater to support a large data-center customer. The constraint is physical capacity, not simply a decision to install different cooling equipment.

More treatment capacity also requires infrastructure buildout, and experts say that work takes time. A project can use the recycled-water capacity already available locally, but broader use depends on whether enough treatment infrastructure is built around it.

At least $270 millionMeta wastewater infrastructure investment

Meta will invest at least $270 million in wastewater-infrastructure projects near its data centers.

30%Tax credit sought by WateReuse Association

The WateReuse Association is advocating legislation that would provide a 30% tax credit for recycled-water infrastructure.

Financing moves from a local utility question to a buildout question

The spending paths are different. Meta’s planned investment is company funding for projects near its facilities. The association’s tax-credit effort would use legislation to encourage more recycled-water infrastructure across industries. Both point to the same practical requirement: reuse at data-center scale needs capital for treatment capacity before water can reach a cooling system.

Loudoun’s mix does not eliminate potable-water demand. It shows that recycled water can take a meaningful share where the underlying wastewater network is large enough—and why that network may determine which future data-center sites can use it.