MIAMI VALLEY — There are hundreds of data centers operating across Ohio. The facilities power the internet and Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are at least two more of them on the way to the Buckeye State – both right here in the Miami Valley.
At least one of those data centers is planning on using millions of gallons of water a day.
The News Center 7 I-Team’s lead investigative reporter, John Bedell, has been investigating what it means for the communities around these data centers, and how they could impact your money and our water supply here in the Miami Valley.
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Think of data centers like the backbone of the internet. Every e-mail you send, every movie or show you stream – they all exist on a server in a data center somewhere. Data centers bring jobs and growth, but also come with controversy. Some people worry data centers could drain precious resources.
There’s been a buzz in Piqua this month. “The big one has been the data center here lately,” Chris Wenrick, owner of Chris’s Barbershop in Piqua, told the I-Team. “People have been talking about that.”
That talk has been happening around Wenrick’s barbershop. “The barbershop is kind of the meeting place of everybody,” Wenrick said. “That’s where people come in, it’s kind of like a safe place. They talk. You get all different types of people from the community in here.”
Wenrick says he’s heard all manner of concerns from customers in Piqua about the data center. He wondered aloud himself about the planned data center in town: “Especially the people who live close to that,” Wenrick said. “How’s that going to affect them?”
And those conversations about the data center coming to town have been going on inside local coffee shops, too. Like the one where the I-Team met Piqua resident Alisha Lange.
“I’m very concerned with the water consumption,” Lange told the I-Team.
Water might not be the first thing you think of when you think about data centers. But most of them rely on tons of water to cool their systems.
That includes the one coming to Piqua at the intersection of Farrington and Washington Roads, where two buildings will each be the size of six football fields.
Documents the I-Team reviewed show the company behind the data center in Piqua estimates it could use up to two million gallons of water every day.
What’s not in those documents: the name of the company.
“If this company wants to build in our community, don’t you think that we should know who they are?” Lange asked. “Why is it such a secret?”
The City of Piqua told the I-Team, “The identity of the company is subject to a non-disclosure agreement and is expected to be announced by the company in 2026.”
City documents the I-Team got only identify the company as “J5 LLC d/b/a Shaytura LLC.”
State corporation records the I-Team pulled from the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office show the business formed here in Ohio this summer.
The I-Team uncovered data center non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, beyond Piqua.
We filed open records requests for the agreement between Google and Douglas County, Georgia. All references to water use specifics to water requirements throughout the document are blacked out – a secret.
The I-Team found the same thing for a Microsoft data center in Georgia. The numbers for water use were hidden. Our open records request even turned up NDAs: one with Microsoft and another agreement that had the company’s name redacted.
The Dayton region’s water is reliant on the Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer.
“We have constant exchange between the Great Miami River and the underlying aquifer,” Mike Ekberg, the manager of water data and analysis at the Miami Conservancy District, told the I-Team. “It’s really all one water.”
Bedell asked Ekberg, “How important is it to protect that aquifer as a regional natural resource?”
Ekberg answered: “This aquifer system … we’re totally dependent on it for our drinking water. It’s all we got.”
The Miami Conservancy District is currently in the middle of a study looking into the sustainability of our local aquifer system. The MCD says it’s important for our community to think about our shared water resource.
“What we want to do is look at kind of the sustainability of the aquifer system as we move into the future, and what are the future threats in terms of water use, changing weather patterns, potential for transferring water out of the Great Miami River watershed to adjacent areas,” Ekberg told the I-Team. “All of those things can upset or potentially impact the water balance. The balance between all of the water that we get for this aquifer system comes from precipitation, rainfall, and snowmelt. And then we use some of it, and a lot of it goes into the river and flows out, and there’s a healthy, sustainable balance right now. But there are points where, if we use that water, move it out of the watershed in certain ways, that we could upset that balance. There’s kind of tipping points. And we want to understand that. And the research behind this grant is understanding where those tipping points are.”
Ekberg says as this study looks into managing the aquifer into the future and understanding possible threats it faces that one of those potential threats is water use.
“There’s different uses,” Ekberg said. “There’s industrial, drinking water, agriculture. We all need it, and those things are all important. And we want to see all of those uses thrive. But we’ve got to do it in a way where we don’t upset that balance between water coming into the system and water going out.”
The aquifer study is being jointly funded by the Miami Conservancy District and the Ohio Water Development Authority. It’s expected to be finished early next year.
The planned data center in Piqua isn’t the only facility like it coming to the Miami Valley. Amazon is building a data center in Sidney.
According to Data Center Map, Ohio is 5th in the country for the number of data centers by state, with 202.
“Data centers, we think it’s a positive, but we also know there’s some cautions with them,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine told the I-Team in a recent interview.
“The argument in favor of data centers is that they attract other businesses,” DeWine said. “When companies see data centers in an area, they’re more likely to go to that area …. Frankly, we’re continuing to look at the situation with data centers. We know that they are a huge, huge use of electricity. We know that. We also know that they use a lot of water. So, I think we have to continue to kind of go through this and evaluate the situation.”
Gov. DeWine told the I-Team there are “a lot of advantages” to having data centers in Ohio, but added that there are “legitimate questions that I think people are asking (about data centers) and we’re going to continue to assess it.”
“One of the things we’re looking at is that transparency, particularly on the water,” DeWine said. “We need to make sure that we have the transparency there. We also need to make sure we have the transparency completely with the electricity as well. So those are areas that we’re looking at right now.”
The I-Team also interviewed Dan Diorio with Data Center Coalition, the industry group that represents data centers.
“They are responsible and efficient water users,” Diorio said.
Diorio also said proposed water numbers don’t tell the full story – that much of the water brought in each day is returned to the water system.
Let’s go back to the data center project in Piqua. Those records the I-Team got show the company will put half of the two million gallons it could use every day back into the local water system.
In Sidney, we don’t yet know how much water Amazon expects to use at its data center planned for that part of Shelby County.
“Our data centers in Ohio exceed industry efficiency standards,” Amazon spokesperson Kylee Yonas told the I-Team. “Our Water Use Effectiveness score, which measures the amount of water used per unit of computing power, is three times better than the U.S. industry average. Our commitment to the communities where we operate is equally important, which is why we have invested more than $19.7 billion in Ohio, creating thousands of jobs and supporting local communities through education programs, skills training, and renewable energy projects.”
In addition, Amazon told the I-Team, “We follow standard industry practices with full transparency. Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and corporate structures are common in major infrastructure projects, and we work openly with local governments and utilities to ensure fair cost-sharing for any needed infrastructure.”
The I-Team asked Diorio with Data Center Coalition: Why not be more transparent as an industry?
“Well, the data center industry, just like any other industry, has to consider confidentiality in terms of protecting proprietary and competitive information,” Diorio said.
Data centers provide local governments details on their water needs so water authorities can plan and build more infrastructure. “We are fully committed to paying our full cost of service, both for electricity and water,” Diorio said.
While data center operators pledge costs will not be passed on to you, residents remain unconvinced water bills won’t go up.
“There will come a reckoning, and we don’t want to see that happen,” Coweta County, Georgia, resident Rob Cole told the I-Team.
“It is going to put pressure on the county water supply,” Cole’s neighbor, Steve Swope, told the I-Team. “There’s no doubt about it.”
“I definitely believe that utility rates will go up in regards to data centers,” Lange told the I-Team inside that coffee shop in Piqua. “Just because statistically across the country where they’ve been popping up, they have increased utility rates.”
The I-Team also reached out to the City of Piqua for this report.
“The data center project represents the culmination of years of community planning and preparation,” City of Piqua Economic Development Director Chris Schmiesing told the I-team in an emailed statement. “The tract of land assembled for development at the south edge of Piqua was initially identified as a strategic growth area in the 2007 Piqua Comprehensive Plan. Our team at the City of Piqua has worked diligently to position the community for economic development opportunities, and we are beginning to see the results of that work. The approval of the agreements to bring this project to fruition marks a major win for the Piqua community that will be felt for generations to come.”
“We are proud to bring a project of this scale and impact to Piqua, marking significant economic growth for our community,” Piqua City Manager Paul Oberdorfer told the I-Team in an emailed statement. “Along with Piqua City Commission, the City of Piqua staff has made this project a reality through years of hard work and dedication. We look forward to Piqua’s strategic growth and future opportunities.”
In a separate statement, the City of Piqua told the I-Team:
<i>Piqua City Commission voted 4-0 to approve a development agreement for an enterprise data center project at its meeting on Monday, November 3, 2025, representing a major economic development win for the community.</i>
<i>The 607-acre project will include two data center buildings operating with advanced, highly efficient water and power usage systems. The site is located north of Farrington Road and east of Washington Road, half a mile north of exit 78 on Interstate 75, in Piqua. In the past year, the Planning Commission and City Commission have reviewed and approved the annexation and zoning designation of multiple properties, including the project site, along Farrington Road.</i>
<i>The company bringing the project to Piqua will make an approximately $1 billion investment in fixed assets in addition to a $78 million investment in utility infrastructure. The City of Piqua and the company have agreed to a 15-year, 100-percent Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) tax exemption and a 30-year, 100-percent Tax Increment Financing (TIF) designation in support of the project.</i>
<i>The data center project will bring more than 1,000 jobs during the three- to five-year construction period and 50 full-time, permanent jobs with average annual earnings of $100,000 plus benefits. In addition, the company will utilize numerous local service providers to support the ongoing operations of the facility. </i>
<i>The company is expected to make an announcement revealing its identity sometime in 2026.</i>
— Statement from City of Piqua to the I-Team
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City of Piqua and City of Sidney officials did not speak to the I-Team on camera for this report.
The City of Sidney did not directly answer any of the I-Team’s questions by email, nor did city officials in Sidney send a statement to the I-Team.
But according to City of Sidney documents the I-Team reviewed, the data center in that community is expected to lead to 75 new full-time jobs, with an estimated annual payroll of $6,750,000.
In those same documents, city officials describe the Sidney project as “a significant real property investment,” with “a total investment of approximately three billion dollars,” from “Amazon Data Services, Inc. (ADS).”
According to city documents the I-Team reviewed, the Sidney data center project is expected to start in January.
A City of Piqua spokesperson confirmed to the I-Team that construction on the data center in that part of Miami County should start late next year.
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