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Visakhapatnam and its neighbouring coastal districts will soon host hyperscale AI data centres of at least 6.5 GW capacity, an unprecedented scale in India. As alarm over huge data centres persists world over, how these data centres will affect people’s access to water and power, and the environment and wildlife in the hills and forests near these projects, have become recurring questions on the minds of many Vizag citizens.
On September 6, the civic group Stop Vizag Data Centres held what they called India’s first people’s convention on AI data centres. As citizen-led movements, particularly in the United States of America, have successfully halted data centre projects in many areas, scores of people came together opposing the upcoming data centres in north Andhra Pradesh.
The convention was held at the Alluri Seetharama Raju Vignana Kendram in Vizag, with discussions and talks led by experts in environment, law, water, and energy security, and rights activists from the city. It was attended by many Vizag residents including students and tech workers.
The meeting was held in the backdrop of recent attempts by authorities to pull down social media content opposing data centres in Vizag, attempting to thwart citizens’ protests, and the police detention of leaders of Left parties who were on their way to meet Dalit residents who have been dispossessed of land for one of the data centre parks.
Fear of water stress
EAS Sarma, former secretary to the Government of India, questioned the potential impact of hyperscale data centres on water security in the region. Delivering the keynote address, he spoke about the current water shortage in many parts of Vizag, amid a rainfall deficit and depleting groundwater levels.
The Mudasarlova reservoir, which has been one of the primary sources of drinking water for Vizag in the past, has nearly dried up. One of the three data centre parks being built by Google and Adani Group in Adavivaram lies right across the road from the reservoir, barely 120 metres away. Sarma cautioned that the data centre park was likely to block tributaries flowing into the reservoir through the Simhachalam and Kambalakonda hills, further drying up the reservoir.
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government has repeatedly refuted fears around water stress, claiming that by the time the data centres are up and running, the Polavaram Irrigation Project would be completed and Visakhapatnam would have surplus water.
However, multiple speakers including Sarma said that the decades of delay in the Polavaram project, and the fluctuating water requirement numbers given by public representatives, did not inspire confidence among the public.
IT Minister Nara Lokesh had earlier said in the Assembly that data centres with 6.5 GW capacity would need around 3 TMC of water. Google has since said that it would use air-cooling technology and not water in its Visakhapatnam data centre amid mounting public concern. More recently, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu reportedly said that five of the proposed hyperscale data centres would need 5 TMC of water.
When TNM sought a clarification from the state government, Director of Information and Public Relations KS Viswanathan said in response that the government’s targeted data centre capacity is 6.5 GW, which would need 3.25 TMC of water if using water-cooling technology.
With Google switching to air-cooling, and Reliance planning to set up a desalination plant to meet its water needs, the water requirement for the remaining data centres is expected to be around 2 TMC, he said.
“The Polavaram project is scheduled for commissioning in March 2027. Polavaram would provide about 25 TMC to Vizag city, of which 6 TMC is set aside for industrial requirements [which includes these data centers]. The data centers are expected to commission starting 2028 onwards. This is to clarify that no residential water allocation would be given to data centers. Only incremental water to Vizag city coming from the Polavaram project, augmented by desalination capacities, would be given to the data centers,” the response said.
Speedy environmental clearances
So far, the three data centre parks being built by the Adani Group in partnership with Google are the only projects that have been given environmental clearances (ECs), and have already begun construction.
The three ECs, which have been challenged in front of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), were granted within just a week.
“Even to build a hut in this country, you don’t get approvals in a week,” said D Nagasaila, an advocate in the Madras High Court, speaking during a panel discussion on regulatory lapses and subversion of the law.
Activists have criticised the speedy ECs granted to the Adani Google data centre project, arguing that the proximity of the Tarluvada data centre site to the Kambalakonda wildlife sanctuary warrants reclassification of the project, warranting a detailed Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) under the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEF&CC).
The Union government too has said in the Parliament that it has no plans to introduce any separate environmental clearance framework for AI data centres, and they will be continued to be classified as regular construction projects under the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006, which only needs environmental clearance from the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA).
Nagasaila said that data centres are being allowed to bypass proper EIAs because of this classification. “Such projects need a detailed cost-benefit analysis. The project proponent must justify the need for the project, explore multiple sites, explain why each site is preferred, and provide extensive details on the nature of the project. In an EIA, they are supposed to have a comprehensive environmental impact study over four seasons through the year. After identifying environmental impact, the proponents must explain the mitigation steps they are going to take. But to get over all of this, data centres simply say, ‘We are putting up a building’,” she said, questioning if the immediate approval of ECs points to collusion between SEIAA, the political executive, and corporations.
The I&PR Director said that the data centers are not located in any wildlife area. He said that the state’s forest department has given clearance for the Google Adani data centres, while other clearances are “progress and will be handled as per extant environmental and forest laws.” When asked about noise emissions from the humming of cooling systems, he said that the noise would be dissipated within the building, and “there would be no noise impact on the nearby communities.”
High energy use
Energy researcher Sagar Dhara spoke about the high energy use of data centres.
According to the state government, data centres have been given the provision of sourcing their own power, provided that it is 51% renewable energy.
But Sagar said that renewable energies including wind and solar are not necessarily free of environmental impact, from extraction of metals to transmission infrastructure and land use. He noted that wind and solar energy are intermittent sources that would still need reliance on back-up generators.
Cautioning against a serious impending energy crisis, he said there is a need to switch to low-energy technologies.
"If data centres use local resources and earn profit, it’s the residents who lose out. Even with low-carbon technology like renewables, it’s important to ask who pays and who benefits,” he said, calling for a citizen-led environment appraisal of the proposed data centres.
Public interest
A recurring question among speakers and the audience was whether local residents stood to benefit from the data centres at all.
When asked about this, the state government claimed a long list of benefits, from boosting the economy by creating jobs and adding to the GDP, investments in renewable energy, and a need for sovereignty on data centre infrastructure.
The response said that from the Google Adani data centres alone, it expects the generation of around 1.88 lakh direct and indirect jobs.
But these numbers have fluctuated over time. While the proposals for the Google Adani data centres mention only 1,725 permanent jobs once the project is operational, Nara Lokesh has previously said the data centre ecosystem in Andhra Pradesh will create close to 60,000 high-paying jobs.
“There is a lack of trust in the government particularly when it comes to data centres, because the numbers keep constantly changing,” said Sameer Bajaj, a researcher at Aapti Institute.
He said that in places such as New York, US and Johor, Malaysia, where people’s movements have been successful in getting governments to slow down data centre approvals, “it came back to the idea that these were not in public interest and not benefiting citizens.”
He said that communities must be seen as stakeholders in India’s development mission for AI, and decisions must be stewarded by communities. “We need to make sure community voices are heard not just as protests but as part of the system,” he said.