New Florence AWS data center to tap local aquifer for water

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is planning a substantial 17-building data center campus, known as Project Green, on the eastern edge of New Florence in Montgomery County, Missouri. The facility, located just off I-70, is slated to draw 50 million gallons of water annually from the Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer to cool its extensive operations. This aquifer, an underground reservoir stretching over 1,500 feet deep in central Missouri, is the proposed water source.

The project's annual water consumption is comparable to that of a single golf course, with each individual building's usage roughly equivalent to a restaurant's. Scott Kaden, Groundwater Section Chief at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR), stated that water usage at this scale is not unusual for high-yield wells across the country and state, often for public water supply or irrigation. AWS has indicated that the wells will be drilled deep enough to avoid interfering with local private wells. While Missouri is a riparian state with no explicit regulations limiting groundwater draw, Kaden noted that landowners cannot negatively affect a neighbor's ability to use water, which could lead to civil matters.

Monitoring data from an older New Florence well dating back to 1981 shows slightly declining water levels, but Kaden cautioned against drawing broad conclusions from a single data point, emphasizing the need to consider the aquifer's overall thickness (over 1,000 feet of water remaining) and multiple monitoring points. Engineering firm CDM Smith, using DNR projections through 2060, estimates the aquifer naturally refills at 406 million gallons per day, significantly outweighing the total withdrawals from all other wells in the region, which amount to 71 million gallons daily. This indicates that the aquifer gains far more water than it loses.