Guzzling Water in New Mexico
Data centers have been in the news recently because they are popping up all over the United States to support artificial intelligence and the internet. Data centers are big buildings full of specialized computers that use a lot of electricity, and they need to be cooled with lots of water. People are rightly concerned about their water consumption, especially since corporations are building them in New Mexico and Arizona where acute water shortages worsens by the day in both states.
There are 21 data centers in New Mexico that use up to 1.8 billion gallons of water per year. More data centers will be built even though New Mexico is in a severe drought, and it is unclear where the water rights for these facilities will come from or if governments that want them to be built for tax revenue reasons will make sure that they comply with state water law.
The Meta data center in Los Lunas, NM uses about 75 million gallons of water per year. It uses Rio Grande water. Did Meta buy out agricultural water rights for the plant? The plant also uses a million megawatts of electricity per year. By comparison, a hospital uses about 8000 megawatts per year. Meta has committed to using renewable energy for the plant and has built some solar.
Dairies
Yet data centers use a tiny amount of water compared to the New Mexico dairy industry which uses about 90 billion gallons of New Mexico’s freshwater resources every year. Alfalfa farming to support dairies and other cattle farming uses another 85 billion gallons per year in New Mexico. There are 16 large dairies in New Mexico and the largest cheese factory in the US operates in Clovis.
Each dairy uses about 4 billion gallons of water per year, depending on the herd size at the dairy. Water is used for cows to drink but also to wash down the facilities. Each gallon of milk requires 5 gallons of water.
We can compare a large data center using 75 million gallons of water per year to a dairy using 4 billion gallons of water per year. Public concern about data center water use is justified but the lack of concern about dairy water use in a desert state is hard to understand. Cattle don’t belong in the desert Southwest when they can be raised in Michigan or Iowa with minimal impact on water supply or wildlife habitats.
The only other industry that comes close to dairy’s water consumption in New Mexico is pecan farming. Yet pecan farming doesn’t produce the large amounts of methane and ground water pollution that dairy farming does. It does consume large amounts of water from the Rio Grande and from ground water associated with the Rio Grande.
A substantial amount of the feed dairy farms use in New Mexico is grown in the San Luis Valley in Colorado where 21,000 acres are devoted to alfalfa production, impacting the Rio Grande and groundwater before the Rio Grande enters New Mexico.
The hay grown there is trucked through New Mexico on large trucks to Clovis, Deming, Roswell and Portales where large herds of cattle eat the hay and convert it to mountains of manure which create methane gas, a potent greenhouse gas. The feces and urine also leach into the groundwater, polluting the wells of the residents nearby with nitrates and pharmaceuticals and bacteria. In some of these places the oil industry is already polluting ground water with toxic fracking chemicals that are unregulated.
The trucks that carry the large loads of alfalfa from Colorado to New Mexico dairies run year-round and make multiple trips per day. These trucks spew diesel smoke and kill wildlife on the highways.
Subsidies
Alfalfa farmers receive less subsidies than farmers who produce crops like soy, corn or wheat. Alfalfa prices have been falling in the last few years while the costs of producing alfalfa are relatively high, making for a small margin for alfalfa farmers. Even so, alfalfa farming in the Southwest is a huge water hungry industry to support cattle production.
On the other hand, dairy farmers have enjoyed extensive federal subsidies since the 1930s in the form of price supports that shield dairy operators from price fluctuations. Milk consumption in the US continues to decline with healthier plant-based alternatives taking a larger share of the market. However, cheese and yogurt consumption remains high.
Big Picture
Given these facts, we can only wonder if the dairy industry should be phased out in New Mexico to stop pollution and free up substantial amounts of water for people and wildlife habitat. The Rio Grande has been dropping substantially in the face of accelerating climate change and ground water pumping is overwhelming many aquifers.
Shutting down New Mexico’s dairies would be positive for the state’s water supply in the short and long term. Many of New Mexico’s dairies relocated from California because of water consumption, regulations, and tax costs there. Perhaps New Mexico should increase regulation and raise taxes on dairies to fit their impacts on our state and encourage them to move to areas with sufficient water.
In the meantime, I’ll have oat milk in my coffee.
