Amazon is spending $20 million to support water conservation on the Colorado River — but still won't say how much water it uses

Amazon has pledged $20 million to a new initiative aimed at water conservation in the Colorado River Basin, with a target of raising $100 million over the course of two years. At present, the company has only disclosed $32 million in commitments. Amazon's global data center withdrawals are reported at 2.5 billion gallons, but specific figures regarding water use in individual basins, warehouses, or power generation are not publicly available.

The company states that its data center sites are air-cooled, thereby shifting the responsibility of water use onto power plants.

AWS, Amazon's subsidiary, offers customers region-level water data, but it asserts that its own Colorado River Basin sites utilize an air-cooling system, thereby indirectly passing the burden of water consumption to power plants. Amazon has pledged to contribute to projects focused on leak repairs, canal lining, and precision irrigation, all aimed at mitigating the effects of the river's supply-demand gap of approximately 1 trillion gallons annually.

The company's chief sustainability officer, Kara Hurst, linked the initiative to Amazon's Climate Pledge, emphasizing the intrinsic connection between water and climate. However, Amazon has provided no concrete data on the company's own water consumption in the Colorado River Basin. When queried about its water usage, Amazon's response offered no new information beyond the earlier disclosures, meaning the firm remains unwilling to reveal the exact volume of water it draws from the basin.

Two projects have been identified so far, both located in the Lower Basin. Amazon will invest $2.2 million over three years with the Municipal Water District of Orange County for leak detection and repair, with the expectation that this will result in a yearly saving of over 189 million gallons. Additionally, $2.4 million will be allocated to agtech company Arable for the installation of soil-moisture sensors on tribal farmlands fed by Lake Mead, which is projected to save around 238 million gallons per year.

These two projects represent approximately 23% of Amazon's overall pledge, leaving the possibility of further contributions, although none are currently earmarked for any publicly named project.

The Colorado River Basin's supply-demand gap stands at an annual rate of 1 trillion gallons, rendering Amazon's current efforts relatively minor. Amazon disclosed in June 2026 that its data centers withdrew about 2.5 billion gallons worldwide in 2025, recording a 2% decrease from 2024. The company claims a water usage effectiveness of 0.12 liters per kilowatt-hour, a metric more than seven times the industry average.

AWS VP Kerry Person admitted that Amazon's data centers are responsible for a significant portion of global water consumption, reflecting frustration with the portrayal of the data center industry in the wake of AI advancements. Despite Amazon's assertion that it has no water-cooled data centers in the Colorado Basin, it fails to disclose the water used by power plants and energy generation facilities that support its increasingly power-intensive data center operations.

Amazon claims to be 75% of the way towards achieving water positivity, returning three gallons for every four gallons consumed by its data centers in 2025. However, it remains a crucial question as to whether Amazon will provide a full account of its water consumption in the Colorado River Basin, as its current disclosures present only a partial and inadequate response to the crisis at hand.