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View all search resultsData hubs' troubled waters
The country is racing to power the global AI boom, but the unquenchably thirsty data centers it needs are already draining the water that sustains millions of lives.
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The data center construction project is underway in the Nongsa Digital Park Special Economic Zone (KEK) in Batam, Riau Islands, on Aug. 29, 2024. (Antara/Teguh Prihatna)
I
ndonesia is scrambling to avoid being left behind in the global data center rush. Yet like digital hubs elsewhere, it is now confronting the familiar ecological fallout shadowing an otherwise booming sector.
A flash point has emerged in West Java’s Purwakarta, an hour’s drive from Jakarta, where a major facility is slated for development near Jatiluhur Dam: the primary lifeline supplying drinking water to the capital and irrigating the country’s vital rice belt carpeting the province.
The planned 640-megawatt (MW) complex, to be developed by Singapore-based BDx Data Centers, will initially draw 6,000 cubic meters of water each day, roughly equivalent to the daily needs of 15,000 four-person households. And that figure is projected to rise substantially over the next decade.
As anxiety over clean water deepened during this year’s El Nino-induced drought, which dried up rivers and reservoirs in the region, West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi stepped in to halt the project, citing the absence of a comprehensive environmental impact assessment. The governor’s move came roughly two months after he attended the complex’s groundbreaking in July.
These environmental friction points extend well beyond West Java.
In the Riau Islands, residents of Batam have taken to the city’s streets, protesting data center projects they say are choking off residential water supplies. Alongside Purwakarta, Batam is being aggressively marketed as the nation's premier frontier for digital infrastructure.
While authorities have dismissed the community's claims, arguing that the facilities are not yet operational and attributing water shortages entirely to the prolonged dry season, these twin disputes offer an unsettling glimpse of what lies ahead if data infrastructure expands without oversight.
