Which Industries Use the Most Water in America

The US pulls about 322 billion gallons of water from its rivers, lakes and aquifers every day, based on the most recent national census from the US Geological Survey. That works out to roughly 970 gallons per person, most of it borrowed rather than used up.

Withdrawal vs. consumption: The distinction matters.

• Withdrawal counts every gallon taken from a source, whether it returns to the environment or not.
• Consumption counts only the water that never comes back, lost to evaporation, plant growth or a finished product.

Agriculture is the country's largest water footprint. Growing corn, raising cattle and irrigating soybeans sit at the top of the chart, and most of that water exits through the crops and livestock themselves rather than flowing back to a river.

Power generation looks similar in size but behaves differently: thermoelectric plants withdraw about 133 billion gallons a day, nearly matching corn, yet roughly 97% returns to its source, leaving actual consumption at a few billion gallons.

Hydraulic fracturing sits far down the national list, though its demand concentrates in dry basins across Texas, Colorado and Oklahoma where it competes directly with farms and towns.

Roughly 40% of the US is facing moderate or worse drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor. If those get worse, they could strain industries like power and agriculture.

Do data centers use a lot of water? With the rapid growth of data centers across the US, water consumption has become a big concern for local communities. But the actual water use of data centers is very small, especially compared to the public’s perception.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that US data centers consumed about 17.4 billion gallons of water directly in 2023. Put another way, US corn farming uses more water in a single day than every American data center consumes directly in a year.

The caveat is that this counts on-site cooling water only: the electricity powering those servers carried an indirect footprint of about 211 billion gallons in 2023, roughly twelve times larger. Berkeley Lab expects the direct use of water from data centers to double or quadruple by 2028 as AI workloads scale.

The long-term water trend: US water withdrawals peaked in 1980 and have fallen since, hitting their lowest level in five decades by 2015 even as the population added roughly 100 million people. More efficient power plant cooling, better irrigation and water-saving appliances have let the country grow while using less.