Amazon wants to help the Colorado River, but we still don’t know how much water the company uses — SkimNews
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- Amazon launched the Colorado River Basin Collaborative, pledging $20 million toward a $100 million, two-year conservation effort for the river that serves 40 million people across seven US states and two Mexican states.
- Amazon disclosed in June that its data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water globally in 2025, with directly-operated facilities cutting consumption 2% year-over-year and claiming 52% efficiency gains since 2021.
- A 2025 Guardian investigation alleges Amazon excluded "secondary" water use — water consumed generating electricity for its facilities — from sustainability metrics, with a leaked internal document citing 10.5 billion gallons consumed in 2021, roughly equivalent to 95,000 US households.
- Amazon's sustainability report discloses water use per kilowatt-hour (0.12 liters, claimed seven times more efficient than the industry average) but not total water consumption since 2021; Microsoft and Google disclose total water use in their reports.
- In Orange County, California, Amazon committed $2.2 million over three years to detect and repair leaks, projected to conserve 189 million gallons annually; California hosts more Amazon warehouses than any other state.
- The UN-backed Water Resilience Coalition, which Amazon is joining alongside Microsoft and Meta, will vet projects in the new collaborative; AI was estimated to consume 312.5 billion to 764.6 billion liters of water in 2025.
Why it matters: Amazon's $20 million pledge buys it a seat at the conservation table for a basin serving 40 million people, but the Guardian investigation's leaked 10.5 billion-gallon 2021 figure and Amazon's refusal to share total historical water use leave Arizona and Nevada residents — facing utility rate hikes from Colorado River cuts — unable to assess the company's true footprint.
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