Four jurisdictions. Four different rules. None of them measures what you give back.
Virginia puts the duty on the water utility, so the number about your site is produced by someone else. Utah puts it on the operator, at up to $10,000 a day for an incomplete report. Ontario asks for neither and instead decides whether to approve you at all, on a water claim nobody can check. Alberta has legislated a duty to measure and has not yet decided what measuring means. Virginia and Utah both begin on 1 January 2027; Alberta’s Act is already in force.
Water Amendment Act, Bill 7
Who reports: Every licence holder, eventually. Today about one in five.
Alberta has legislated a duty to measure and has not yet decided what measuring means. That document is being drafted now.
Data Centre Playbook and municipal pauses
Who reports: Nobody. There is no reporting duty here at all.
Ontario does not ask you to report. It decides whether to approve you, and it decides on a water claim nobody can check.
HB 496
Who reports: Water utilities. Not data centres.
A number about your facility is about to be published, and you are not the one producing it.
HB 76 — Data Center Water Policy Amendments
Who reports: The data centre operator.
Here the number is yours, and an incomplete one is charged by the day.
What all three have in common
Each one asks how much water went in. None of them asks how much came back out.
Withdrawal is not consumption
A utility sales figure and a self-reported annual total both measure what entered the site. What a facility actually consumes is what it took minus what it returned, and the return side is rarely metered anywhere. Consumption, in almost every published figure, is an assumption.
A good operator and a bad one look the same
A facility that returns most of its water to sewer and a facility that evaporates all of it can report an identical withdrawal. Nothing in these rules distinguishes them. Reuse, which is the expensive thing an operator actually invested in, is invisible.
Nobody has to be able to check it
None of the three requires that the figure be independently verifiable. That is not an oversight by the drafters so much as an absence in the field: the standards that demand defensible quantification, VWBA 2.0 among them, specify no measurement protocol at all.
Does Alberta require water use reporting?
Yes. Alberta's Water Amendment Act (Bill 7) came into force on 11 March 2026 and requires all licence holders to report actual water use, with that reporting made public. Around 20 per cent of licences carried a reporting requirement before it. The province has committed to establishing measurement and reporting standards but has not yet published them.
Which US states require data centre water reporting?
Virginia and Utah both have reporting rules taking effect on 1 January 2027. Virginia HB 496 places the duty on water utilities, which must categorise monthly sales by customer type including data centres. Utah HB 76 places the duty on the data centre operator, with annual reports to the Division of Water Rights.
When do data centre water reporting rules start?
1 January 2027 for both Virginia HB 496 and the consultation duty in Utah HB 76. New large data centres in Utah have been reporting to the Division of Water Rights since 1 July 2026.
Do data centres have to report water use in Virginia?
No. Virginia HB 496 requires the water utility to report, not the facility. This is the most common misunderstanding about the law, and it matters because it means the published figure about your site is produced by someone else.
What is the penalty for not reporting data centre water use?
In Utah, civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day for an incomplete report, after notice and an opportunity to cure. Virginia HB 496 places no penalty on the operator, because it places no duty on the operator.
Do these rules measure how much water a data centre actually consumes?
No. All of them measure water going in. Consumption is what a facility takes minus what it returns, and none of these rules require the return side to be metered. A facility that returns most of its water and one that evaporates all of it can report the same figure.
Is there a moratorium on data centres in Ontario?
Mississauga paused data centre approvals with an interim control bylaw on 29 July 2026 and Oakville followed on 11 August 2026. The province published a data centre playbook on 13 August. These are pauses on approval rather than reporting duties.
Pleione measures both sides continuously and signs the result, so the number a community reads is the same number the operator reads, and either of them can check it without asking the other. See what we show →