Amazon wants to help the Colorado River, but we still don’t know how much water the company uses

The Colorado River faces an ‘unprecedented’ drought as data centers demand more water.

The Colorado River faces an ‘unprecedented’ drought as data centers demand more water.

Amazon plans to spend $20 million on water conservation projects along the Colorado River, a crucial but dwindling water supply for 40 million people in the Western US.

The initiative comes as Amazon and other tech companies face mounting scrutiny over how much water their data centers use. Amazon has a goal of becoming water positive — replenishing more water than it uses — by the end of the decade. It recently disclosed some information about its water use, but we still have an incomplete picture of the company’s impact as a whole.

Amazon announced the launch of a Colorado River Basin Collaborative today, with a mission to “create one of the biggest corporate water conservation efforts for a single U.S. watershed.” It expects to raise $100 million over two years — including the $20 million investment from its own coffers — for water conservation efforts.

Stretching 1,400 miles, the Colorado River brings water to 40 million people across seven states in the Western US and and two states in Mexico. The waterway has faced “unprecedented” drought over the last 26 years, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation. Decades of overuse on top of human-caused climate change have exacerbated the problem. To cope, the US Department of the Interior finalized a plan in August imposing steep water cuts on Arizona, Nevada, and California.

As the first stop for most goods the US imports from Asia, California is home to more Amazon warehouses than any other state. In Orange County, California, Amazon pledged $2.2 million over the next three years to help detect and patch up leaks. That effort is ultimately supposed to conserve 189 million gallons of water each year, according to Amazon.

As part of the newly announced collaborative, other companies can contract independently with conservation projects they choose. The United Nations-backed Water Resilience Coalition will vet projects. Amazon is also joining the Water Resilience Coalition, which includes Microsoft, Meta, and other brands across a range of sectors.

Tech companies are facing waves of resistance against new AI data centers. AI was estimated to use between 312.5 billion and 764.6 billion liters of water in 2025, according to one estimate , about as much water as people consume globally in water bottles. In Arizona, Colorado River water cuts are expected to raise utility rates , and some residents fear data centers could make things worse.

In June, Amazon disclosed that its data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water globally in 2025, including those it owns, leases, or shares. Data centers Amazon owns and operates directly reduced their water consumption by 2 percent in 2025 compared to the year prior, according to the company. It attributes gains to a 52 percent improvement in water efficiency since 2021.