Consumptive use in context
A closed-loop data center uses less water than a golf course.
This page reads the SRBC consumptive-use ledger straight. Every number below is a live permit from the Susquehanna River Basin Commission’s Water Resource Portal, extracted . We translate it into Olympic pools, acre-feet, and West Branch flow so you can judge for yourself.
The data center draws 0.24% of the nuclear plant’s peak. They share a zip code.
The yardsticks
Six reference points
Millions of gallons per day is not an intuitive unit. Everything on this page is expressed in the six anchors below. They are all sourced.
One Olympic pool of water flows past Williamsport every 7.8 seconds at the West Branch’s long-term mean discharge (11,374 cfs, SRBC). During Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972, one pool flowed by every 0.32 seconds. During Tropical Storm Lee in 2011, one every 0.5 seconds. The river carries orders of magnitude more water than any user on it.
Three ways a data center can be cooled
Cooling design decides the water bill
“Data center water use” is a design choice, not a fact of nature. The Lycoming ordinance requires closed-loop. Here is what that actually means.
- Water evaporates from cooling towers
- Consumption is high; some heat rejected to air, most to water
- Prohibited under the proposed Lycoming ordinance
- Coolant recirculates in a sealed loop; water only tops up losses
- Sits at or near the Amazon Salem Twp draw of 0.129 mgd
- Required design under the Lycoming ordinance
- Heat rejected entirely to air via dry coolers
- ~10% more electricity to move that heat
- Allowed and encouraged under the ordinance
The proposed Lycoming ordinance requires closed-loop or air-cooled designs. Open evaporative is not permitted. Every reference on this page is to the middle column’s water profile.
By industry
How every industry stacks up
Every dockets-tier consumptive-use permit currently active in the Susquehanna basin, grouped by NAICS industry, from largest to smallest. A closed-loop data center sits below the average golf course.
| Industry (NAICS) | Permits | Total mgd | Average per permit (mgd) | Max permit (mgd) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electric Power Generation (gas, coal, biomass) | 10 | 90.89 | 9.089 | 53.00 |
| Nuclear Electric Power Generation | 1 | 21.00 | 21.000 | 21.00 |
| Fossil Fuel Electric Power Generation | 2 | 10.70 | 5.350 | 5.80 |
| Golf Courses & Country Clubs | 36 | 10.94 | 0.304 | 1.62 |
| Water Supply & Irrigation Systems | 7 | 8.11 | 1.158 | 3.00 |
| Crude Petroleum & Natural Gas Extraction (docket-tier) | 2 | 4.39 | 2.195 | 2.52 |
| Pulp, Paper & Paperboard Mills | 1 | 3.65 | 3.650 | 3.65 |
| Paper (except Newsprint) Mills | 1 | 2.75 | 2.750 | 2.75 |
| Sanitary Paper Product Manufacturing | 1 | 2.50 | 2.500 | 2.50 |
| Bottled Water Manufacturing | 10 | 2.46 | 0.246 | 0.45 |
| Food Manufacturing | 4 | 2.08 | 0.521 | 0.70 |
| Ethyl Alcohol Manufacturing | 1 | 2.00 | 2.000 | 2.00 |
| Specialty Canning | 1 | 1.13 | 1.132 | 1.13 |
| Mining (abandoned mine drainage, refuse) | 2 | 1.02 | 0.510 | 0.72 |
| Stone Mining & Quarrying | 3 | 0.86 | 0.287 | 0.53 |
| Construction Sand & Gravel Mining | 1 | 0.82 | 0.823 | 0.82 |
| Crushed & Broken Limestone Mining | 2 | 0.53 | 0.265 | 0.38 |
| General Medical & Surgical Hospitals | 1 | 0.50 | 0.499 | 0.50 |
| Dog & Cat Food Manufacturing | 1 | 0.40 | 0.400 | 0.40 |
| Solid Waste Landfill | 1 | 0.36 | 0.360 | 0.36 |
| Pottery, Ceramics & Plumbing Fixture Mfg | 1 | 0.35 | 0.350 | 0.35 |
| Dairy Product Manufacturing | 1 | 0.28 | 0.283 | 0.28 |
| Nonmetallic Mineral Mining | 1 | 0.28 | 0.280 | 0.28 |
| Textile Mills | 1 | 0.26 | 0.256 | 0.26 |
| Pharmaceutical & Medicine Manufacturing | 1 | 0.20 | 0.200 | 0.20 |
| Automobile Manufacturing | 1 | 0.20 | 0.200 | 0.20 |
| Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing | 1 | 0.18 | 0.177 | 0.18 |
| Secondary Smelting & Refining | 1 | 0.17 | 0.170 | 0.17 |
| Paint & Coating Manufacturing | 1 | 0.16 | 0.160 | 0.16 |
| Dried & Dehydrated Food Manufacturing | 1 | 0.14 | 0.140 | 0.14 |
| Colleges, Universities & Professional Schools | 1 | 0.13 | 0.132 | 0.13 |
| Data Processing, Hosting & Related Services (Amazon Salem Twp) | 1 | 0.13 | 0.129 | 0.13 |
Source: SRBC Water Resource Portal (wrp_projects) · extracted 2026-07-28 · docket-tier permits only. Approvals By Rule (natural-gas well pads at 5–10 mgd per pad) are shown separately in the full ledger. Peak-Day and 30-Day-Average limits are pooled here for industry rollup; a strict comparison is in the full ledger.
Every SRBC dockets-tier consumptive-use permit combined uses ~171 mgd. That is 2.3% of the West Branch’s long-term mean flow at Milton. The Amazon data center draw of 0.129 mgd is 0.00175% of that mean flow — a rounding error the river completes in about seven minutes.
Translated
What these numbers actually look like
Every daily draw below, converted into Olympic pools, households, acre-feet, and West Branch flow. The 300 MW closed-loop data center under the proposed ordinance appears in the amber row.
| User | mgd | Olympic pools / day | Households equivalent | Acre-feet / day | % of West Branch mean flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Susquehanna Nuclear (peak day) | 53.00 | 80.3 | 176,667 | 162.7 | 0.721% |
| Brunner Island coal & gas station | 23.10 | 35.0 | 77,000 | 70.9 | 0.314% |
| Christopher M. Crane Clean Energy Center | 21.00 | 31.8 | 70,000 | 64.4 | 0.286% |
| Hummel Station (gas) | 6.50 | 9.8 | 21,667 | 19.9 | 0.088% |
| York Energy Center, Block 2 | 5.80 | 8.8 | 19,333 | 17.8 | 0.079% |
| Pixelle Spring Grove paper mill | 3.65 | 5.5 | 12,167 | 11.2 | 0.050% |
| Chester Water Authority (public system) | 3.00 | 4.5 | 10,000 | 9.2 | 0.041% |
| 300 MW data center — fully evaporative (not permitted here) | 3.00 | 4.5 | 10,000 | 9.2 | 0.041% |
| Procter & Gamble Mehoopany paper | 2.75 | 4.2 | 9,167 | 8.4 | 0.037% |
| First Quality Tissue (Clinton County) | 2.50 | 3.8 | 8,333 | 7.7 | 0.034% |
| Pennsylvania Grain Processing (ethanol) | 2.00 | 3.0 | 6,667 | 6.1 | 0.027% |
| Penn State Blue & White Golf Courses | 1.62 | 2.5 | 5,400 | 5.0 | 0.022% |
| Chef Boyardee cannery (Milton, PA) | 1.13 | 1.7 | 3,767 | 3.5 | 0.015% |
| Veolia Bloomsburg water system | 1.00 | 1.5 | 3,333 | 3.1 | 0.014% |
| General hospital (average, one docket) | 0.50 | 0.76 | 1,667 | 1.5 | 0.007% |
| Dog & cat food manufacturing (one docket) | 0.40 | 0.61 | 1,333 | 1.2 | 0.005% |
| Solid waste landfill (one docket) | 0.36 | 0.55 | 1,200 | 1.1 | 0.005% |
| Average golf course & country club (SRBC docket avg) | 0.30 | 0.46 | 1,013 | 0.93 | 0.004% |
| Average bottled-water plant | 0.25 | 0.37 | 820 | 0.75 | 0.003% |
| 300 MW data center — closed-loop (Lycoming ordinance requirement) | 0.15–0.30 | 0.23–0.45 | 500–1,000 | 0.46–0.92 | 0.002–0.004% |
| Amazon Data Services (Salem Twp) — live SRBC docket | 0.129 | 0.20 | 430 | 0.40 | 0.00175% |
| Pennsylvania College of Technology (Colleges & Universities docket) | 0.13 | 0.20 | 440 | 0.41 | 0.002% |
Conversions: 1 mgd = 1.515 Olympic pools/day; 1 mgd = 3,333 households at EPA’s 300 gpd; 1 mgd = 3.069 acre-feet/day; West Branch mean flow = 7,349 mgd (SRBC Milton). Peak-Day figures where applicable; 30-Day-Average otherwise per SRBC methodology.
Annual, not daily
Picture the annual draw as a lake
Instead of daily flow, imagine the whole year’s consumption sitting in one shallow lake. This is how much water each user actually removes from the basin in twelve months.
Amazon draw times 365 = 47 M gal/yr = 144 acre-feet. On a 10-acre footprint, that fills a pond about 14 feet deep — roughly the depth of a residential trout pond in the region. A working paper mill’s annual draw would fill a 100-acre lake to 41 feet. The nuclear plant next door would fill it to 594 feet — taller than a 55-story building.
Against the river itself
The West Branch outpaces every user on it
A 300 MW closed-loop data center at 0.20 mgd would take from the West Branch what the river replaces in 2.4 seconds of mean flow. Amazon’s Salem Twp facility takes what the river replaces in 1.5 seconds. Susquehanna Nuclear next door takes what the river replaces in about 10.4 minutes.
The full ledger
Top 100 active SRBC consumptive-use dockets, high to low
Every docket-tier permit approved 2021–2026 and currently active in the Susquehanna basin. Ranked by approved consumptive use (mgd). This is the raw ledger the industry rollup above is built from.
| # | mgd | Limit | Sponsor / Facility | County / Municipality | Industry |
|---|
Source: SRBC Water Resource Portal (wrp_projects layer) · extracted 2026-07-28. Peak-Day and 30-Day-Average limits are reported as approved. Approvals By Rule (natural-gas well-pad ABRs at 5–10 mgd each) sit at ranks 4–100 of the pooled top-100 and are covered separately in the spreadsheet.
What our ordinance actually requires
Design lock-in, not honor system
Closed-loop or air-cooled only
Open evaporative cooling is prohibited. The permit sits inside a Community Benefits Agreement, so the operator gives it up by walking away from the fees.
SRBC docket + Peak-Day cap
Any withdrawal above 100,000 gpd 30-day average or 20,000 gpd from groundwater already triggers an SRBC review. We require the docket and a peak-day cap in the local CBA.
Public metering & reporting
Monthly withdrawal data is filed with the township and posted on the county open-data portal. Not the operator’s word.
Consumptive-use compensation
The SRBC already requires low-flow release compensation for consumptive users through Cowanesque Reservoir when the Wilkes-Barre gauge falls below Q7-10. The data center is bound to that program by docket, not by promise.
Sources
Every number on this page is auditable
-
SRBC Water Resource Portal,
wrp_projectsfeature service. Extracted 2026-07-28. gis.srbc.gov / wrp_staging / MapServer / 0 - SRBC Watershed Profile — West Branch Susquehanna at Milton, PA. Long-term average flow 11,374 cfs. srbc.gov continuous-instream-monitoring
- National Weather Service · Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center. Historical floods, West Branch Susquehanna at Williamsport (period of record 1865–present). weather.gov / marfc · Williamsport.pdf
- USGS · Statistics for USGS 01551500, WB Susquehanna River at Williamsport, PA. waterdata.usgs.gov / 01551500
- EPA WaterSense — average household 300 gpd; average American 82 gpd (USGS 2015). epa.gov / watersense
- Olympic pool volume — 2,500,000 L = 660,430 US gallons at World Aquatics 50 × 25 × 2 m standard. en.wikipedia.org / Olympic-size_swimming_pool
- Fairfax County Board of Supervisors — Data Center Water Use Study. Full evaporative 300 MW estimate ~3 mgd. fairfaxcounty.gov / dcwater-report.pdf
- Kovastack — Data Center Cooling Water Benchmarks. Evaporative 1.8 M gal / MW / yr; closed-loop 0.05–0.3 M gal / MW / yr. kovastack.ai
- Airsys North America — Data Center Cooling Technology Guide. airsysnorthamerica.com
- EESI — Data Centers and Water Consumption briefing. eesi.org
- NRC / SRBC — Consumptive Use Mitigation Plan and Q7-10 flow at Wilkes-Barre (814 cfs / 526 mgd). nrc.gov / ML100150524.pdf
- Williamsport Sun-Gazette — Tropical Storm Lee 2011 crest details. sungazette.com
Read the fiscal case, the ordinance, or the CBA.
The water story is one of three. The tax base story is on the landing page. The exact contract sits in the Community Benefits Agreement term sheet. The zoning & design lock-in sits in the model ordinance.