>> A new report shows massive hyperscale data centers are endangering the Great Lakes.

Those computing centers consume vast amounts of water proving that while the lakes are a vast resource for the region, they're not infinite or Patty.

Wet Lee joins us now with more.

Patty, explain how the water rich Great Lakes could ever experience water shortages.

Right?

When you hear that the Great Lakes hold 20% of the world's fresh water, you think that sounds like a not been?

>> The report does a great job explaining how Great Lakes states have worked together to protect that.

Nobody is going to be running a pipeline from Lake Michigan to Phoenix.

But what the report also makes obvious is.

How reliant we all are on groundwater.

Ground.

Water moves back and forth between the lake.

It flows in and out of it.

That's what some vulnerable to extraction and what could actually be termed do watering when you run out of that underground resource.

And of course, we should mention that this report.

It's from Great Lakes.

Thank you very much.

So what is creating this new demands on water supply?

agriculture's mining is another, but as you mentioned, data center specifically these hyper scale data centers, which are the massive ones either use for bitcoin mining or something like generative AI.

Those are the scale is growing and they're coming online faster and faster and they require massive amounts of water to cool all that equipment through like an evaporative process.

So that's what the water is being used for.

Up to one to 5 million gallons a day for just one center.

That's as much water 12,000 people use an entire year combined one center.

That is a lot of water.

So what sorts of proactive solutions does.

The report recommends one is for states to stop offering tax breaks and incentives to data centers to locate here and to instead provide benefits back in terms of agreeing to efficiency.

As you know, there are maybe more efficient ways to cool that equipment other things are to set the fission see standards and revisit was for how much groundwater can actually be extracted by a single entity.

There are a lot of proposals in this.

And as the report says, when governments sense urgency, they do find a way to act quickly.

But speed is of the essence here about the report's author told me, you this is happening really quickly as we all know and we need to act quickly in response proactively.

because we know there are some other states that have experienced water shortages.

We are going to come one of those.

Patty, what thank you so much.