Google’s $15 billion data center project in Visakhapatnam, India — its largest-ever investment in the country — is facing mounting protests and legal challenges over water usage and its proximity to a wildlife sanctuary, even as construction continues on the ground.
The scale of the water concern is stark: Visakhapatnam receives about 410 million liters of water a day against demand of 480 million, meaning the city of 2.5 million already rations water before a massive new industrial water consumer arrives. Activists and children have marched through the city carrying banners reading “We cannot drink DATA” and painting handcuffs on the Google logo, while the project also faces legal challenges over its proximity to the Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary, home to leopards and pangolins, according to Reuters’ on-the-ground reporting.
Google’s response, and the state’s defense
Google told Reuters the project will be developed in line with applicable laws and will use “advanced air cooling to protect vital local water resources” — a direct response to the water-usage criticism, though the specifics of how much that technology reduces total consumption weren’t detailed. Andhra Pradesh’s state government, led by an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has denied allegations that the project was fast-tracked without properly weighing risks to water supplies and wildlife, and has instead promoted the development as historic and transformational for the region, citing potential for up to 188,000 jobs.
A joint venture with its own political weight
The project is being built in partnership with Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate — a business relationship that carries its own political sensitivity in Indian public discourse, given the Adani Group’s prominence and its close association with Prime Minister Modi’s government. Adani did not respond to Reuters’ queries for the story, leaving Google as the primary public face defending the project’s environmental commitments.
Why this is a bigger story than one Indian city
India wants to position itself as a major hub in the global AI infrastructure buildout, and how the Visakhapatnam dispute resolves is likely to shape whether future hyperscale data center projects in the country meet similar resistance or a smoother reception. The pattern isn’t unique to India — data center opposition has gone national in the United States, with protests recorded across dozens of states, and water availability has emerged as the single most recurring flashpoint globally as AI infrastructure buildouts collide with local resource constraints that predate the AI boom entirely.
Green Visakha founder Raja Rama Mohan Roy summarized the activists’ core position plainly: development should not come at the cost of local livelihoods. That framing — jobs and investment weighed directly against water access and habitat preservation — is likely to recur at nearly every future hyperscale AI data center site globally, making Visakhapatnam an early, closely watched test case for how governments and tech companies navigate that tension when it becomes a public, organized protest rather than a quiet permitting dispute.
What to watch next
- Whether the pending legal challenges succeed in altering or delaying the project’s construction timeline.
- Whether Google discloses more specific water-consumption figures or independent environmental assessments in response to continued protests.
- Whether the outcome in Visakhapatnam becomes a template — positive or cautionary — for how other Indian states approach future AI data center proposals.
Sources
- Google-Adani $15b India Data Centre Project Faces Protests Over Water and Wildlife Concerns in Visakhapatnam — Emirates 24|7 (Reuters)
- Google’s $15bn India Data Centre Is Running Into Water and Wildlife — TheNextWeb
- Google’s $15 Billion India Data Centre Project Battles Water, Wildlife Concerns — Reuters via The Star
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