Amazon pledges $20 million for Colorado River conservation, but full water usage data remains hidden

Amazon has launched a new Colorado River Basin Collaborative, aiming to become one of the largest corporate water conservation efforts focused on a single US watershed. The company plans to raise $100 million over two years, contributing $20 million of that itself.

The Colorado River stretches 1,400 miles and supplies water to 40 million people across seven US states and two Mexican states. Over the past 26 years, the river has experienced what officials call unprecedented drought, driven by decades of overuse combined with climate change. In August, the US Department of the Interior finalized a plan imposing significant water cuts on Arizona, Nevada, and California.

In California, home to more Amazon warehouses than any other state, the company has pledged $2.2 million over three years toward leak detection and repair in Orange County, an effort expected to save 189 million gallons of water annually. Under the new collaborative, other companies can independently fund conservation projects vetted by the UN-backed Water Resilience Coalition, which Amazon is also joining.

An incomplete picture

The announcement comes as tech companies face growing scrutiny over data center water consumption — AI use alone was estimated to consume between 312.5 billion and 764.6 billion liters of water in 2025. In June, Amazon disclosed that its data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water globally that year, with directly operated centers cutting consumption by 2 percent.

However, these figures exclude water used to generate the electricity powering those facilities — so-called "secondary" water use, which typically makes up the majority of a data center's water footprint. A 2025 Guardian investigation alleged Amazon deliberately omitted this data over concerns about reputational risk, citing an internal document showing the company used 10.5 billion gallons of water in 2021 when secondary use is included. Amazon disputed the report's accuracy, calling it based on an outdated document. The company says it is 75 percent toward its goal of becoming water positive by the end of the decade.