Data Center Developer Sues IID for Colorado River Water

KPBS reports that the proposed cooling system would require roughly 750,000 gallons per day. IVCM argues that it has leased about 160 acres of nearby farmland and can fallow that land, then redirect its existing water service to the data center. The company says this would avoid increasing net demand on the Colorado River system.

That is the developer's legal and operational position, not a ruling. The lawsuit remains unresolved, and the retrieved sources do not establish that IID must approve the transfer or that the proposed offset satisfies every applicable water-service rule.

CalMatters describes the proposed facility as a nearly one-million-square-foot hyperscale project intended for AI and machine-learning workloads. It also reports that Imperial County imposed a 45-day data-center moratorium in June and formed a public commission to advise on zoning policy after local opposition.

The water lawsuit is separate from the developer's challenge to that moratorium, but both disputes expose the same infrastructure dependency: a large compute project cannot proceed on electrical capacity and land approvals alone. Cooling design, a legally secure water source, environmental review and community acceptance can become coupled constraints.

For data-center planners, the practical lesson is narrower than the lawsuit's outcome. Water assumptions should be documented and secured early, including source, volume, transfer rights, drought exposure and fallback cooling design. Here, the move from a wastewater plan to contested river-water access turned a cooling requirement into litigation before the proposed facility began operating.