New Katz Muhl Law Aims to Protect Clean Drinking Water by Creating Alternatives for Big Tech Companies

NORTHBROOK, Ill. — Illinois will have additional tools to preserve clean drinking water—including when it comes to the water needs of data centers—under a new law backed by state Rep. Tracy Katz Muhl, permitting the use of treated municipal wastewater for industrial purposes.

“Drinking water is a human necessity,” Katz Muhl said. “Industrial water users don’t always need fresh water. Often, they can make do with reused water that’s been treated—and when they do, we conserve potentially millions of gallons of fresh water that can be used by families and future generations.”

Katz Muhl’s House Bill 2391 amends the Environmental Protection Act to clarify that treated municipal wastewater can be used by industries including agriculture, manufacturing, and power generation—or by the same municipalities for things like sprinklers, landscape irrigation or toilet flushing. One major potential use that Katz Muhl highlights is cooling water used by data centers. The bill was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker on Aug. 15.

The data centers that handle AI services and research use vast amounts of water to keep industrial-scale servers and heat exchangers from overheating. A typical AI data center has hundreds or thousands of servers all inside common spaces, and cooling is a major concern. Data centers use massive heat exchangers that draw off heat from servers, but then need to be cooled themselves—which is done by pushing cold water through them. Allowing the use of recycled water instead of data centers needing to pull in new water constantly would represent a significant savings.

“New technology is always going to come with new considerations for our natural resources,” Katz Muhl said. “With the amount of water data centers and other high-tech innovations need, and will continue to need, enabling them to reuse as much water as possible will make them much more sustainable.”