California will soon have more than 300 data centers. Where will they get their water?

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The new data center proposed for a quiet city about 115 miles east of San Diego came across people’s radars in different ways. For patrons of the deli on West Aten Road, it was the white “Not In My Backyard” signs jutting out of lawns. For local irrigation district workers, it was something called an “electric service application.” For Margie Padilla, it was a rant on Facebook. The 43-year-old mom came across a post online while she had a few minutes to scan social media last spring after a day spent tending her garden and taking care of her two boys. “Somebody was complaining about this center,” Padilla said. “I was like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’” What’s going on is the second-largest new data center being considered statewide, which would be less than half a mile from Padilla’s stucco home in the center of Imperial Valley. If finished by 2028, as the developer expects, the at least 950,000-square-foot, two-story data center could be the largest operating statewide, taking up 17 football fields’ worth of land. The roughly $10 billion,