North Carolina's data center pipeline is colliding with a water question the state is now trying to answer through statute. WRAL's coverage, published June 15, 2026 by climate reporter Liz McLaughlin, tracks Senate Bill 730, which passed the state House and would largely prohibit evaporative cooling systems at hyperscale facilities. The bill also requires large data centers to contractually cover the infrastructure and energy costs of serving them. Representative Matthew Winslow framed the measure as protecting drinking water while preventing cost-shifting to ratepayers.
The legislation targets the single most water-intensive cooling method in the data center playbook. Antone Jain, a water engineer who works with data centers nationally, gave WRAL the clearest framing of the tradeoff the bill forces: "Evaporative uses a lot more water, but it uses much less energy. Closed loop can use more energy, but less water." Banning evaporation does not make the heat disappear. It moves the burden onto electricity-hungry chillers and refrigeration loops, which is exactly the water-power tradeoff operators keep getting wrong when they optimize one resource in isolation.
The proposed builds show how operators are already adapting. Microsoft's Person County campus is designed around air-cooled chillers and closed recirculating water loops, avoiding the evaporative draw the bill would outlaw. Amazon's Richmond County project leans on outside air for roughly 93% of the year, reserving water-based cooling for under 7% of operations during peak heat. Amazon claims the air-first design cuts electricity demand 25% to 35% during summer peaks and draws from existing surplus capacity. Both architectures point the same direction: heat rejection in North Carolina is becoming a closed-loop and free-cooling problem, with evaporation reserved as a last resort or removed entirely.
Jain's warning on corporate water pledges lands on the metering problem. He cited a Georgia facility that consumed 30 million gallons that was not initially tracked, and cautioned that "you really need to read the fine print" on water-positive commitments, noting restoration credits "have to be local to that watershed. You can't do it on a global basis." That gap between pledged and actual draw is the same accountability hole driving scrutiny of offsite water consumption at facilities that report low onsite numbers while consuming heavily upstream. North Carolina has already seen this fight play out, with the Apex and Cape Fear water disputes showing how fast local supply concerns escalate.
For cooling planners watching the legislation, the signal is direct. A statutory ban on evaporative cooling rewrites the capex calculus toward closed-loop systems, larger chiller plants, and the higher power envelope that comes with them. Operators who pencil in evaporative towers for their North Carolina sites now face a design reset, and the heat that water used to carry away has to go somewhere on the electricity bill instead.