The Data Center Boom: Water, Watchfulness, and the Wisdom of the Christian

Introduction: The Buildings Behind the Cloud

When we tap a phone, ask an AI a question, stream a sermon, or check our bank balance, the information seems to come from nowhere — from “the cloud.” But there is no cloud. There are buildings: enormous, windowless warehouses filled with humming computers, drinking electricity and water around the clock. These are data centers, and in the last two years they have become one of the most contested developments in America. A wave of opposition is rising, and Christian talk radio — including a recent Crosstalk broadcast on VCY America in which host Jim Schneider interviewed Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center on “the growing concern over data centers” — has begun to give voice to it.

The concerns are real and they come from both sides of the political aisle. In 2025, local opposition led to the delay or cancellation of data center projects totaling an estimated 156 billion dollars. From the suburbs of Northern Virginia to the banks of the Columbia River, from Arizona to Ohio farmland, ordinary citizens are packing township meetings to push back. The believer, who is called to have “understanding of the times” (1 Chronicles 12:32), does well to understand what is actually happening, to separate genuine concern from exaggeration, and to consider it all in the light of God’s Word.

I. Voices of the Opposition: What the Crosstalk Broadcast Revealed

The Crosstalk program with Jim Schneider and his guest Tom DeWeese laid out, in plain and sobering terms, just how rapidly this is unfolding and why ordinary Americans are alarmed. Several points from that broadcast are worth recording.

DeWeese described the sheer scale: the state of Virginia alone has nearly 600 of these facilities, many clustered around Washington, D.C. He pointed to a proposed complex in Box Elder County, Utah — a staggering 40,000 acres, two and a half times the size of Manhattan — that residents fear would consume more electricity than the entire state of Utah uses and draw down the Great Salt Lake. A planned Amazon facility in Indiana, he noted, would use the electricity equivalent of a million homes. He recounted how a data center was nearly built on the edge of the historic Manassas Battlefield until public outcry stopped it.

What struck DeWeese most, he said, was the grassroots uprising itself — in his words, an explosion of ordinary people “rising up and saying no” unlike anything he had witnessed in his years as an activist. In one Utah meeting, more than a hundred residents chanted their opposition, only to watch the county commissioners walk into a back room and vote yes anyway. He also pointed to the broken promises used to win approval: facilities that promise jobs and tax revenue but, once operating, employ almost no one — one report crediting Virginia data centers with a single permanent job for every 54 million dollars invested — while securing long tax exemptions, such as Kentucky’s 50-year sales-tax break on equipment.

The broadcast also gave concrete examples of the resource strain that this article examines below: a data center in Georgia that drew nearly 30 million gallons of water without initially being billed, neighbors whose electric bills doubled, and the constant low-frequency hum from transformers and cooling systems that torments those living nearby. DeWeese fairly raised the question of where the environmental movement has been on all this, calling its silence about the paving-over of farmland and green space a glaring hypocrisy.

The most pointed warning of the broadcast concerned not water or power but surveillance — and we will return to that below. But the practical thrust was a hopeful one: DeWeese and Schneider repeatedly stressed that local citizens, organizing and showing up, have already stopped or stalled projects across the country. Their counsel was for people to inform themselves, share what they learn, and make their voices heard with local officials. With those points in view, let us examine the specific questions in turn.

II. Are Data Centers Polluting the Water?

This is one of the sharpest concerns, and the honest answer is: they can, and in some places they do — though the picture is more nuanced than the alarming headlines suggest.

First, it helps to understand that data centers do not use water as an ingredient. They use it to stay cool. The thousands of processors inside generate tremendous heat, and the most common cooling method — evaporative cooling — passes water through the system, where much of it evaporates into the air. A single large facility can consume as much water as a small city. In Northern Virginia, the world capital of data centers with over 300 facilities, the data centers consumed close to two billion gallons of water in 2023, a 63 percent increase from 2019. In water-stressed states like Arizona and California, this has rightly alarmed residents.

But the deeper issue is not only the quantity of water used — it is the quality of the water returned. To stop bacteria, mold, and corrosion from building up in the cooling systems, operators add chemicals: biocides such as chlorine dioxide or bromine, and corrosion inhibitors such as phosphates. Small amounts of these chemicals can leach into the water that is discharged. In February 2026, community outrage near one facility led to a class-action lawsuit alleging Clean Water Act violations, and expansions were halted pending independent audits. A national review of roughly 700 data centers found that nearly half sit in communities already carrying above-average environmental burdens, including water pollution — a pattern critics fairly call environmental injustice, since the burden falls on those least able to resist it.

What Are the Solutions?

Here is the encouraging part: the engineering solutions already exist, and public pressure is forcing their adoption. There are several proven approaches:

Closed-loop cooling circulates the same water through sealed piping again and again, rejecting heat to the outside air rather than evaporating water away. It can cut water use by roughly 90 percent compared to traditional evaporative cooling. Direct-to-chip and immersion cooling bring the cooling fluid right to the hot components in a sealed circuit, with some newer systems evaporating essentially zero water. Air-cooled systems avoid water almost entirely, though they use more electricity. Using non-potable water — treated wastewater or “gray water” and harvested rainwater — spares precious drinking water for the community. And safer chemistry, choosing less harmful treatment chemicals and varying discharge points, reduces pollution where water cooling is still used.

It must be said, in fairness, that closed-loop cooling is not a perfect cure. Because the same water cycles repeatedly, salts, metals, and treatment chemicals can concentrate over time and must be periodically “bled” out as wastewater — so even the best systems require careful, honest monitoring. The real solution is a combination: better cooling technology, recycled water, safer chemicals, transparent public reporting, and genuine accountability. The encouraging fact is that none of this is impossible. It is being done. Where communities have demanded it, operators have adopted it.

III. The Watchers: Rewards Cards, Malware, and the Gathering of Information

The second great concern is not about water but about information — and here the data centers are simply the storehouses where an enormous and growing record of your life is kept. The question Jim Schneider and others are raising is a sober one: who is gathering all this information, and what will they do with it?

The Rewards Card in Your Wallet

Consider the humble grocery loyalty card. It feels like a small kindness — a few dollars off in exchange for scanning a card. But the savings are the bait, not the gift. Most loyalty programs extensively track your buying habits, your web searches, your demographics, and far more. The grocery chain Kroger reportedly made 527 million dollars in a single year by selling its customers’ data to data brokers. Around half of American consumers are enrolled in two or more such programs. What was once a simple paper punch card has become, in the words of one privacy report, one of the most powerful surveillance systems in everyday life — tied to apps, payment systems, and third-party brokers. Increasingly, artificial intelligence analyzes that purchase history to predict what you will want, and even to set the price you personally will be charged — a practice now openly called “surveillance pricing.”

Malware and the Quiet Theft of Data

Beyond the data we surrender willingly, there is the data stolen outright. Malware — malicious software hidden in a bad link, a fake app, or a compromised website — can silently record what you type, track where you browse, and harvest your passwords and financial information. Combined with the legitimate tracking of advertisers and apps, the result is that a remarkably complete portrait of a person — where they go, what they buy, what they believe, who they associate with — can be assembled and stored. And it is stored, of course, in data centers.

IV. Will This Lead to the Abuse of Power?

This is the question the Christian must take most seriously, because Scripture has a great deal to say about the human heart and power. The honest answer is that the potential for abuse is enormous, and history gives us no reason for naive optimism.

When a small number of corporations and governments can assemble a detailed profile of nearly every citizen — purchases, movements, communications, opinions — the temptation to misuse that power is severe. We have already seen, during the COVID-19 shutdowns, how quickly the machinery of information control can be turned against ordinary people and even credentialed experts who dissented from an official narrative. We have seen, in nations like China, a “social credit” system in which a citizen’s purchases, associations, and statements determine his access to travel, banking, and employment. The infrastructure that makes such a system possible — vast data gathering, centralized storage, AI analysis — is precisely what is being built, for commercial reasons, all around us.

The Crosstalk broadcast sharpened this warning considerably. Tom DeWeese described how China has already divided cities with gated checkpoints where a citizen’s chip — containing a record of whether he “complies” — determines whether the gate will even open. He warned that the stated aim of these systems is to capture every facet of a person’s life: biometrics, bank transactions, electronic health records, social-media posts, the people one associates with, and one’s political and religious beliefs. He noted that banks have already refused accounts to conservative organizations — a foretaste of how such consolidated data can be turned against those who hold unpopular convictions. Most chilling was a remark he attributed to Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who reportedly described a vast AI-powered surveillance network as a means of ensuring that citizens will be on their “best behavior.” One caller to the program aptly called these facilities “electronic concentration camps.” Whatever one makes of the strongest language, the underlying concern is sober and serious: the tools of total monitoring are being assembled in plain sight.

The Bible is not surprised by this. It teaches plainly that the human heart, apart from the grace of God, is bent toward the love of power and the oppression of others:

And it foresees a day when economic life itself — the ability to buy and to sell — will be controlled by a central power and tied to submission:

We must be careful and sober here, not sensational. No one can say that any particular technology is the fulfillment of that prophecy. But the Christian cannot fail to notice that a world of total purchase-tracking, centralized data, and the power to switch off a person’s ability to transact is a world that looks far more like that prophesied scene than anything previous generations could have imagined. Watchfulness, not panic, is the proper response.

V. How Can We Protect Our Privacy in the Age of AI?

The believer is not called to retreat into a cave, but to be “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16) — shrewd and prudent in a fallen world. There are concrete, practical steps any family can take. None of them require abandoning modern life; they simply require thoughtfulness.

Above all, the Christian holds these matters with a settled heart. We take reasonable precautions as good stewards, but we do not live in fear, for our times are in God’s hand (Psalm 31:15), and not one sparrow falls without our Father’s knowledge (Matthew 10:29).

VI. The Pros and Cons of Data Centers

To be fair-minded, we must acknowledge that data centers are not simply villains. They are the backbone of nearly everything we now depend upon. Here is an honest accounting of both sides.

VII. The Christian’s Conclusion: Stewardship and Watchfulness

What, then, shall the believer make of all this? Two biblical principles guide us.

The first is stewardship of creation. God placed man in the garden “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). The water, the land, and the air are God’s gifts, entrusted to us. To pollute a community’s water for the sake of efficiency and profit, when cleaner methods exist, is a failure of that stewardship. The Christian may rightly support sensible limits, honest reporting, and the cleaner technologies that already exist.

The second is watchfulness over power. The gathering of vast information is not, in itself, sinful — but it places an enormous temptation in the hands of fallen men, and the Scripture warns us where the unchecked love of power and money leads. The believer should be neither a technophobe who fears every advance, nor a naive consumer who surrenders his privacy and his discernment for the sake of convenience and a few dollars off. He should be watchful, prudent, and free.

The data center boom is one more reminder that we live in a swiftly changing world built by men whose hearts are not naturally inclined toward God. We use its tools, we benefit from them, and we give thanks for them — even this website, by which the truth is sent across the world, depends upon them. But we hold them loosely, we guard against their dangers wisely, and we keep our hearts fixed not on the cloud of man’s building, but on the God who sits above the circle of the earth.

Sources and Further Reading

1. The Holy Bible (King James Version) — Genesis 2:15; 1 Chronicles 12:32; Psalm 31:15; Proverbs 3:5; Jeremiah 17:9; Matthew 10:16, 29; Revelation 13:17; 1 Peter 5:8.
2. “The Growing Concern Over Data Centers,” Crosstalk, VCY America — host Jim Schneider with guest Tom DeWeese, American Policy Center (May 12, 2026).
3. “Data Centers and Water Consumption,” Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI).
4. “Data Centers, Pollution, and the Communities Left Behind,” University of Chicago Sustainability Dialogue (Feb. 2026).
5. “4 Ways To Eliminate Data Center Water Pollution,” Data Center Knowledge (2025).
6. “Closed-Loop Cooling: Water Saver or Chemical Time Bomb?” KETOS (Mar. 2026).
7. “Opposition to AI Data Centers” and S&P Global, “Data center opposition gains momentum” (Jan. 2026).
8. “Loyalty Programs and Data Privacy Risks,” DeleteMe (Mar. 2026); “Are Loyalty Programs Selling Your Data?” The Privacy Report (Apr. 2026).
9. World Resources Institute, “From Energy Use to Air Quality, the Many Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities” (Feb. 2026).