Khora, a densely populated area in Ghaziabad just outside New Delhi, has struggled for a decade to secure a reliable water supply. Residents depend on groundwater, with some areas requiring wells dug 1,000 to 1,200 feet deep, according to Deepak Joshi, president of the Khora Residents' Association. Many residents lack their own water connections and pay 1,000 to 1,200 rupees monthly for shared borewell access.
The situation has worsened as data centers have been constructed in the area, driven by global demand for AI infrastructure. According to a World Resources Institute report, more than half of India's data centers are located in water-stressed regions. Ghaziabad is one such region, where groundwater extraction reached 272 percent of the Central Ground Water Board's recommended annual share in 2024-2025.
Data centers require enormous quantities of water for cooling, and the heat from cooling systems can affect local microclimates, raising air-conditioning demands in surrounding buildings, according to Ranjana Ray Chaudhuri, head of the Department of Natural and Applied Sciences at TERI University. India's total data center capacity has grown fourfold since 2020, from about 375 megawatts to around 1,500 megawatts in 2025, and the 305 data centers nationwide consumed around 150 million tons of water in 2025, with estimates suggesting consumption could double by 2030.
Regulatory oversight remains inadequate, according to Gayatri Naik, co-director of the Center for Environmental Law, Education, Research and Advocacy at the National Law School of India University. Although companies must obtain permission to extract groundwater, they are not generally required to publish regular consumption figures, unlike data centers in the European Union, where operators must disclose water use and report key sustainability data.
In 2025, authorities canceled a long-planned project to reroute Ganges water to Khora. A Ghaziabad Municipal Council official told DW an alternative water project was under development, but residents said they had received no updates. The AdaniConnex data center in the area did not respond to questions about its water consumption.
