Minnesotans Testify About the Need for a Large-Scale (Data Center) Water Permit Process

Senator Ann Johnson Stewart

Senate Bill 3852 requiring “certain users of large amounts of groundwater to apply for their own water-use permit instead of modifying an existing municipal permit,” was presented to the Senate Environment, Climate, and Legacy Committee Thursday, March 26.

Authored by Senator Ann Johnson Stewart (DFL–42), the bill intends to protect Minnesota’s groundwater from unscrutinized and unprotected use. Requiring large-volume industrial water users — such as data center developers — to acquire their own permits would allow the Department of Natural Resources’ to enforce the state’s water allocation priorities. Currently developers are allowed to take from city water supplies as if they were small users, like local residents. Developers would instead be sent to the state to ask for a permit that tracks and charges for exorbitant water needs.

“I’m really proud of this bill … and I am a little shocked that I am the only author on it,” Johnson Stewart said of her sponsorship of the bill in the Senate. In the House, a sister bill, HF3793, was backed by representatives Kristi Pursell (DFL–58A); Liish Kozlowski (DFL–08B); Aaron Repinski (R–26A); Kari Rehrauer (DFL–35B); Brion Curran (DFL–36B); Jay Xiong (DFL–67B); Sydney Jordan (DFL–60B); and Fue Lee (DFL–59A).

Introducing the bill to the committee, Johnson Stewart defined large-volume users as consuming at least 100,000,000 gallons of water per year. This is proportional to approximately the amount of water needed by mid-size communities, such as the city of Excelsior within Johnson Stewart’s district, which has a population of roughly 2,500 people. A data center proposed in Farmington could use 900,000,000 gallons of water per year, doubling the city’s consumption; that center plans to get its water through the city’s municipal permit.

The United Nations coined the term “water bankruptcy” to refer to the current “insolvency” and “irreversibility” of worldwide water withdrawal and pollution.

At the Minnesota Capitol, testifiers shared stories of impending “water bankruptcy” in Minnesota. They warned of the risk that large-volume industrial water users pose to regional aquifers, such as the Prairie du Chien and Jordan aquifers from which most southern Minnesotans source their drinking water. When large-volume users use domestic water supplies, stress on aquifers has resulted in the contamination of groundwater supplies, and threatens to run them dry.

“Minnesota’s groundwater is not finite,” testified Andrew Hillman of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. “Pumping too much water can cause residential wells to run dry, draw contaminants such as manganese and arsenic into residential supplies, and — long-term — can threaten sustainable water supplies across the state.”

Statewide Water Concerns

Janelle Kuznia in front of the Niagara Bottling water plant in Elko New Market. Photo by Sarah Whiting

Elko-New Market resident Janelle Kuznia said a large-volume industrial water user has devastated access to water in her community. In 2022, the California-based Niagara Bottling Company proposed a facility in Elko that would consume 165,000,000 million gallons of water a year — more than double the city’s current water usage.

Kuznia reported: “After intense community advocacy, the DNR required an aquifer pump test to see how this increase would affect local surface water features, the local aquifer, and private wells in the area. During this pump test, hundreds of private wells in the area began to have problems … [including] black and brown water, clogged filters, damaged appliances. … The city has since determined that the excess pumping caused our well problems.”

Kuznia continued: “Despite these issues, the permit was issued to the city, making the city responsible instead of the industrial user for investigating well interference, water quality issues, covering costs, and enforcing statutory priority.” This has burdened the city with legal and financial costs when citizens’ water access was impacted.

Speaking on behalf of Minnesota’s 1.2 million private well owners, Jenna Van Den Boom, of the Stop the Monticello Data Centers group, echoed Kuznia’s worries about contamination caused by excessive stress on groundwater supplies. In written testimony, Van Den Boom described the plight of residents of a privately owned mobile home park, The Meadows. Within Monticello’s city limits, but served by impaired private wells, residents are already without water that is safe to drink.

“The company that owns the trailer park [Lakeshore Management, based in Illinois] provides Culligan bottled water to the residents on a weekly basis,” Van Den Boom said in her written testimony. “This does nothing to fix the water they have access to cook with, clean with, or bathe in. A significant additional draw down on the aquifer, as required in the case of [the data center proposed in Monticello] could cause issues for the city’s other wells and private wells.”

Two hours away, North Mankato is dependent for its drinking water on the Mount Simon-Hinckley aquifer, one of the deepest and oldest aquifers in the state. The aquifer is protected by a state law banning commercial, industrial, or agricultural users from squandering the 30,000-year-old water. However, North Mankato city staff signed a nondisclosure agreement related to a proposed data center that would obtain its water from the city’s domestic supply.

Aquifers are slowly recharged by the permeation of groundwater through layers of porous sand. They risk depletion if excessive pumping exhausts their patient process of replenishment.

North Mankato’s pull from the aquifer is capped at 570 million gallons of water a year, according to recharge rates. In 2023, the city consumed 533 million gallons, which is well within this restriction. However, the data center demands 450 million gallons of domestic water, which would almost double the city’s water usage and certainly shock the 570 million gallon limit.

Speaking as a former hydrogeologist for the DNR, Jim Berg spoke of Minnesota’s unique water prioritization statutes, which he dubs “the groundwater bill of rights” —  classifying people and water-dependent ecosystems as first priority if there are conflicts due to limited water supply. This prioritization is usurped if large-volume industrial water users manipulate the system to muscle into domestic supplies. Instead of allowing data centers to “stomp all over the water-use prioritization system,” Berg said, requiring additional permitting would restore the integrity of the system and prevent dangerous overuse of the state’s aquifers.

Current Laws

Statutes governing data center taxation, passed during the 2025 legislative session, allows — but does not require — the DNR to require an aquifer test. Johnson Stewart’s proposed bill goes a step further, specifying that test results are to be included in the environmental review necessitated by a separate permitting process.

Discussion turned to provisions detailing the new permitting process, such as what a public comment period and environmental review would demand. DNR representative Jason Moeckel said the bill would “require some reprogramming and readjustments to [the DNR’s] permit program.” He worried the public comment period would present challenges for the DNR, which is currently incapable of notifying and receiving public comment on a “geographic basis.” However, Moeckel said the DNR would be willing to work with Johnson Stewart to address these problem points as the bill moves forward.

Opposition to the bill came from Andrew Moley of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, who challenged a provision requiring the DNR and large-volume industrial water users to give notice of the new permit requests to every municipality in its same U.S. geological survey unit code. “This would be a massive undertaking for the DNR,” said Moley.

He also perceives the bill’s requirement for aquifer pump tests to be “duplicative and unnecessary,” as he believes the tests are already adequately ordered by statutes passed in 2025. “The DNR has the authority to request pre-application information from data centers, including water use plans, sources, temperatures, and averages,” he said. “We believe these protections should be followed first.”

Johnson Stewart defended the bill’s quest for transparency, given that there have been several cases around the state in which nondisclosure agreements have shielded development from public analysis. Risk assessment will be more honest, she indicated, if: 1) a separate permitting process, 2) containing provisions for DNR-sanctioned aquifer tests, 3) as well as 30-day public comment periods is required.

“The previous laws passed do not provide adequate protections for the people or the environment,” noted Monticello’s Van den Boom, who said her local government has been overwhelmed without state government oversight and meaningful guidance from the DNR. “We need to hold large industrial water users accountable by requiring them to have their own permits, and [allowing] for public tracking. We are the first line of defense.”

Mo Feshami recounted the inability of Farmington city officials to protect its residents and water supply. “Two months after the DNR warned the city about the significant water demand of the data center, the city signed a contract that guarantees the developer up to 2.93 million gallons of water a day.”

Following discussion, the bill was laid over until the Senate meets again on April 7.

Related Details

• Virginia, where large-scale data centers have been in operation for years, are retroactively creating standards to assess the impact of data center water usage on local communities.
• In Georgia, residents reported their water taps ran dry after a data center began operating nearby.
• A 2023 study by the University of California Riverside estimated that an AI chat session of 20 or so queries uses up to a bottle of freshwater. According to a Lincoln Institute of Land Policy report, AI-related data centers in the U.S. could require 32 billion gallons of water annually by 2028. Locating data centers in cooler, wetter regions can help reduce the amount of water they use and the impact of their freshwater withdrawals. And yet roughly two-thirds of the data centers built since 2022 have been located in water-stressed regions, according to a Bloomberg News analysis, including hot, dry climates like Arizona.
• According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, about 80 percent of typically freshwater withdrawn by data centers evaporates. A significant portion of data center water usage originates from the power facilities where they obtain their energy — including steam-generating power plants. Fossil fuel power plants rely on large boilers filled with water that is superheated by natural gas or coal to produce steam, which in turn rotates a turbine and generates electricity. Water withdrawals from these power plants are a significant source of water stress, particularly in drought-prone areas and in the summer, when water levels are lower and electricity demands are higher.

Potential Benefit of Delaying Development

Some data centers are working on air-cooling or liquid immersion cooling, and new “zero-water” designs.

Maine is prepared to create a moratorium until November 2027 on building data centers

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