Water usage continues to loom large in the debate over artificial intelligence and the build-out of AI data centers. The best conservatives can do is keep shining some much-needed light on the conversation, ensuring it’s grounded in reality, not dystopia.
Earlier this week, the CEO of OpenAI offered a useful data point, explaining in an interview just how many queries someone would have to run through ChatGPT for the system to use about as much water as it takes to produce a single California almond.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 3, 2026
For every 38,000 ChatGPT queries, that is the same amount of water that is used in the production of a single almond in California. pic.twitter.com/YL9sEkjFzw
"I don't have the exact calculation in front of me, but I think the real number is something like, doing this from memory, it might be wrong, but it's close. For every 38,000 Chat GPT queries, that is the same amount of water that is used in the production of a single almond in California. Which is like really, and this is like the full-on, you know, total true water accounting, not just what's running in one data center. There's a question of like, where this came from, because the people that are scarfing down 12 almonds at a time, don't feel like they're doing something horrible from a water perspective for the most part."
Now the math gets a bit more complicated. ChatGPT processes roughly 2.5 billion queries per day, that’s about 29,000 per second, or roughly three-quarters of an almond’s worth of water per second. That sounds bad, until you realize the United States produces about 85 actual almonds per second. And the state of California makes up about 99 percent of that production.
The calculus highlights yet another way the vast majority of the water-usage debate around AI and data centers is overblown.
Yes, local concerns matter, but for the vast majority of communities not already facing extreme drought conditions, AI is not some massive threat to freshwater resources. Even in states like Arizona, shutting down every AI data center tomorrow wouldn’t spare the state from mandatory cuts on the Colorado River, which feeds much of the West.
Worried about data centers?
— Project 48 Arizona (@project48az) September 4, 2026
Let's talk about the facts.
💧 Arizona could shut down every data center tomorrow, and we would still face mandatory cuts on the Colorado River.
Arizona uses roughly the same amount of water today as it did in 1957 and significantly less than it did…
The path forward, then, isn’t letting the government decide which industries get water and which don’t, it’s forcing government to update and improve water infrastructure and clamp down on the obnoxious waste so common in the United States.
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