A study of Southwest Ohio's water resources now underway could help local communities make big decisions about the future.
The Southwest Ohio Regional Water Study was commissioned by the Ohio EPA, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Water Development Authority. It follows a similar, recently completed study looking into water availability in central Ohio as large developments like a new Intel facility and dozens of data centers spring up there.
The Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana Regional Council of Governments is supplying some data on water resources in Butler, Clermont, Hamilton and Warren counties for the study.
OKI Senior Planner David Rutter says the research could guide small governments as they consider whether to welcome developments like large AI data centers.
"In this part of the country, it's not part of our daily conversation to say, 'Do we have enough water?' But I think we're getting to that," he said.
The study will use water data, population growth forecasts and other information to model how much water the 20-county region will have in coming years.
One major concern local leaders might weigh using information from the study: the impact large data centers might have on a particular community.
Data centers can be small and unobtrusive, using less power and water than other businesses. But they also can be sprawling and use an outsize amount of water for cooling purposes. Some data suggests a data center using 100 megawatts of power a day uses more than 500,000 gallons of water in that time — the same as a city of 50,000 people. The largest new data centers powering AI functions use 10 times that amount of power, and likely more water as well.
No center that size has been proposed for the region yet, but Ohio is fifth in the nation when it comes to concentration of data centers. The Buckeye State currently has more than 215 and more are expected in coming years. Most are concentrated near Columbus, though there are also a few dozen in Southwest Ohio.
The proposed development of those centers has prompted questions in many communities about their impact on water quality and availability.
Construction has begun on an 880,000-square foot data facility in Trenton, Ohio, for example, though developer Prologis has assured it will be less water-intensive than some facilities and won't impact the area's residential water supply. The facility is slated to be operational in 2029.
The increase in these centers — and other industrial development — makes it important to better understand the region's water resources, researchers say.
That doesn't just mean how much water we have, Rutter says. It also means thinking through creative ways to use it most efficiently. He gives the example of the Mill Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Queensgate.
"If you don't need drinking water for your operations, can you utilize water coming out of the wastewater treatment plant?" he says. "There's also a push within the study to understand what the potentials are there. So we're looking at all of our water resources. We're looking at groundwater, we're looking at surface water, and we're looking at treated effluent as a source for that as well."
Research firm CDM Smith currently is in the data collection phase of the project. That information will be used to build models simulating water availability in the future. Researchers are expected to release the report and recommendations by November this year.
Rutter says in general, the region has plentiful water supply. But communities should weigh the needs of a proposed development like a large data center that could use a lot of water for cooling purposes against what's available. That's where the study could help.
"Just having an understanding of what our water resources are is going to help our local government, local leaders make those decisions about whether something is appropriate for their community," Rutter said.
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