Data centers — the large, power-hungry buildings that run the internet, cloud storage, and the current wave of artificial intelligence — are arriving in Ohio faster than many communities expected. Across the state, local governments are hitting pause to decide what that growth should look like. As of mid-September, at least about 138 Ohio municipalities and townships had active moratoriums on new data centers, with Westlake among the latest to enact a six-month pause. And this November, voters in 18 Ohio communities will weigh in directly, with measures that range from energy caps to outright bans.
Several of those communities sit in the Lake Erie watershed. Conneaut is on the shoreline, Oregon borders Maumee Bay, and Defiance lies in the Maumee River watershed — the same landscape where the Lake Erie Foundation works every day. Cleveland, a city that draws its drinking water from the lake, has moved furthest into the details. After a temporary pause on new standalone data centers, the city council opened a formal public-input phase, holding hearings in late September with one more scheduled for October 7. Cleveland’s own resident survey explicitly asks about high water consumption and the effects of these facilities on natural resources, infrastructure, and neighborhoods.
Why water is the question closest to our mission
Precision matters here, because this conversation can easily go sideways. Most of the November ballot measures are framed around electricity demand and utility bills, not water — and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. But water is a real and separate question, and it is the one nearest to Lake Erie’s health. Depending on how a facility is cooled and where it sends its wastewater, a large data center can place meaningful demands on local water supply, wastewater treatment, stormwater systems, and the power grid.
That is why we are wary of a comparison now circulating. A new industry campaign, “Future Ready Ohio,” sets data-center water use — about 17.7 billion gallons across all U.S. data centers in 2023 — against Lake Erie’s roughly 127 trillion gallons. The arithmetic is accurate, but the yardstick is wrong. The lake’s total volume tells you nothing about what a single facility withdraws from a specific intake, how much of that water is consumed rather than returned, what its wastewater contains, or how those demands add up alongside every other user in a watershed. Local and cumulative impacts are what communities actually live with — and they are what deserve a clear answer.
Responsible growth and a healthy lake are not competing goals
None of this means data centers are unwelcome. The Lake Erie Foundation’s position has been consistent: responsible economic development and a healthy Lake Erie do not have to compete. What we ask is straightforward. Before a large water user breaks ground, it should be able to say, in public and in specifics, how much water it will withdraw at peak and over a year; where that water comes from and how much is consumed; what volume and chemistry its wastewater will carry and where it will be discharged; how it will manage stormwater; whether lower-water cooling is an option; and how its demands fit alongside the community’s existing infrastructure.
These are essentially the questions Cleveland is now putting to its own residents, and they belong in the rules being written — not left to be sorted out after a facility is already running. It is worth noting that Ohio EPA dropped a plan earlier this year to permit data-center discharges directly into lakes and rivers, which makes clear, local, project-specific review all the more important.
The encouraging part is that much of this is happening in the open and early, while rules are still being drafted rather than after the concrete is poured. That is exactly when public input carries the most weight, and it is a healthier way to make decisions that a community will live with for decades.
How you can help
If you live in a community weighing data-center development, this is the moment to be heard. Cleveland residents can take the city’s data-center survey and attend the final public hearing on October 7, and anyone across the watershed can ask their local officials for the same thing: clear, site-specific answers about water before any decision is locked in. Lake Erie’s health depends on getting these questions asked while the answers can still shape the outcome.