VISAKHAPATNAM, 8 AUG 2026 — Google's $15 billion data centre campus in Andhra Pradesh is being built in a city that already rations water. Visakhapatnam receives 410 million litres a day against demand of 480 million. The number nobody has published is how much the campus will draw.
That gap is the whole argument. The shortfall is municipal and it exists today, before a single rack is energised. It is not a measurement of the project's impact, because no such measurement has been made public.
The numbers that are published
Rationing in Visakhapatnam is routine, which is what a 70 million litre daily gap looks like from a tap. Against that, the state government's assurance is specific and narrow: "no water for rural or residential purposes will be used for the upcoming data centres."
The wording is doing careful work. It commits to the source of the water rather than the volume, and a municipal system with one reservoir does not have a rural tap and an industrial tap that draw from different rain.
What is actually being built, and where
The campus is at Tarluvada, near Visakhapatnam, developed with Gautam Adani's group, and the state projects up to 188,000 jobs. Reuters describes a hillside above the site already stripped to red earth and terraced into steps, so this is a project under construction rather than a proposal.
The Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary sits 860 metres away. It holds leopards and pangolins, and the objections there concern construction noise and heavy equipment rather than water. Google says the campus will use "advanced air cooling to protect vital local water resources" and that sound-dampening measures are planned.
Air cooling is a practical, not rhetorical, answer to the water question. It trades water for electricity — a different local burden, and one that nobody in this dispute has quantified.
Air cooling is a trade, not an exemption
The phrase carrying the most weight in Google's position is "advanced air cooling to protect vital local water resources," and it deserves unpacking rather than either dismissal or acceptance.
Air-cooled data centres use far less water than evaporative designs, which is why operators building in water-stressed places choose them. They do not use none — humidification, make-up water and ancillary systems all draw some — and the design trades that water for electricity, because moving heat with air takes more energy than moving it with evaporation. In a hot, humid coastal climate, that penalty is at its largest.
So the cooling choice converts a water question into a power question, and the power question has been entirely absent from this dispute. Nobody objecting has cited a megawatt figure and nobody defending has offered one. Andhra Pradesh has its own supply constraints, and a campus of this size is a material load on a state grid whether or not it is a material draw on a reservoir.
This is not an argument against the project. It is an observation that the two sides are arguing about water while the design has shifted the burden to electricity.
The objections have gone to court
Two separate tracks are running. Jal Biradari, a water-focused group, has filed a public interest litigation in the Andhra Pradesh High Court through its national convener Bolisetti Satyanarayana, seeking protection for the Kambalakonda sanctuary, the Mudasarlova drinking water reservoir and the natural water streams around it. The Human Rights Forum has filed three further cases at India's environmental court, demanding a halt.
The High Court has advanced the hearing to 24 August, from an original listing of 2 September. Courts move dates forward when they think waiting is the greater risk, and a fortnight is not much time for a project already terracing a hillside. The state has been asked to answer the allegations, which it calls "incorrect and misleading" while adding that the nearby reservoir will not be used for the project.
The state, governed by an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has called the project historic and transformational, denies that it was fast-tracked without weighing water and wildlife risks.
"Development should not be at the cost of livelihood of the people," says Raja Rama Mohan Roy, founder of Green Visakha. That is the argument in one line. The courts will decide it on documents, not soundbites.
The jobs projection sits on the other side of that scale and warrants the same scepticism as the water claims. Up to 188,000 is a state figure, and figures of that shape for data-centre projects are almost always dominated by construction and indirect employment rather than by permanent operational roles — large campuses are famously light on headcount once running, which is a large part of their economics. Nobody in this dispute has published the split, and the split is what determines whether the trade being offered to Visakhapatnam is a decade of jobs or a generation of them.
Why the missing number is the story
Every party here is arguing from a figure the other side cannot check.
Opponents cite the city's water rationing and a reservoir they say will be strained. The state offers a sourcing commitment. Google offers a cooling technology. None of those is a volume, and a volume is the only thing that would settle whether the campus is a rounding error against 480 MLD or a material claim on it.
This is the ordinary shape of infrastructure disputes and it is why they take years. The quantity that decides the question is commercially sensitive, genuinely uncertain during construction, and dependent on design choices that are still being made. So the public argument runs on proxies: a sanctuary's distance in metres, a shortfall in litres, a jobs projection. Each figure is real, but none answers the question.
What would settle it
Three disclosures would end most of this dispute, and all three are within the parties' gift.
A published design water figure, expressed as litres per day at full build and at each phase, with the cooling assumption stated. Air-cooled campuses still use water; the question is how much.
The source, named. If the campus draws from a dedicated industrial allocation, an independent supply or recycled water, naming the source would make the commitment checkable.
And the electricity figure, because air cooling moves the load rather than removing it. A campus of this size in a state with its own supply constraints is an energy story as much as a water one, yet the energy number is absent from the argument.
What to watch
The 24 August High Court hearing, which is the first fixed date in the dispute. Whether Google publishes a water figure before it, since a volume disclosed voluntarily reads very differently from one disclosed under an order. And whether the three environmental-court cases are consolidated, which would tell you whether this is being treated as one project-level question or several narrower ones.
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