Amazon Web Services is facing a lawsuit alleging it published false and misleading statements about the water use and sustainability of its Northern Virginia datacenters, "falsely" portraying those operations as environmentally responsible. The complaint, case number CL26002535-00 filed with the Circuit Court of Arlington County last week, seen by The Register, states that AWS has never publicly disclosed its actual water consumption in the region, known as the world's "datacenter capital." Despite this, the filing says, AWS has repeatedly published assertions regarding its water use and sustainability credentials that the suit alleges to be false, misleading, or unsubstantiated. By doing so, it has hidden the true scale of its water consumption, preventing policymakers and the public from independently assessing the accuracy of its claims, the complaint adds. The named plaintiff in this case is Dr Nathan Wangusi, a water resources scientist who served as the water sustainability program manager at AWS for almost three years until September 2024. The lawsuit says Dr Wangusi obtained detailed billing and water consumption records for AWS facilities in Northern Virginia using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sent to water utilities in the region covering 2023 through 2026. The US's Freedom of Information Act gives any person – a private citizen, a foreign national, or a corporation – the statutory right to request access to federal agency records. The lawsuit claims that these FOIA records "materially differ" from the publicly reported water use figures disclosed by AWS. In particular, the complaint pours cold water – pun intended – on some assertions AWS made in a blog post last month, and covered by The Register at the time. For example, AWS said that in Northern Virginia, it had "dropped water use by 42 percent year-over-year, even as demand for computing continued to grow." AWS, however, did not disclose the comparison period, reporting boundary, or methodology underlying that figure, making independent verification impossible, Dr Wangusi claims in the lawsuit. The complaint goes on to allege: In addition, the filing claims that AWS did not reveal whether its published water withdrawal figures apply only to its own datacenters, or whether they include colocation facilities in the region operated by Equinix, QTS, Digital Realty, and Iron Mountain, where AWS also has infrastructure deployed. Liquid courage The complaint also questions AWS's statement that it is "75 percent of the way to water positive." In Northern Virginia, where AWS made the water positive commitment, the lawsuit claims that FOIA data and Amazon's own portfolio show returns covering 22 to 25 percent of documented consumption. The plaintiff alleges that, by contrast, the 75 percent figure is a global metric that counts 17 projects still under construction. Another representation Dr Wangusi alleges is misleading is a claim that AWS datacenters in Northern Virginia operate "ninety-seven percent of the year by pulling outside air and not using any water." In contrast, or so the lawsuit states, the utility records all show AWS facilities withdrawing water all year round, from January 2023 to December 2026, including the winter months when AWS says that water cooling is largely unnecessary. Datacenter lobbying group Virginia Connects is named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit. The complaint claims the outfit, which promotes datacenter benefits to Virginia stakeholders, conducted a coordinated video advertising campaign on the same date that AWS published its "42 percent reduction" claim, promoting many of the same narratives that the complaint is characterizing as "false". Dr Wangusi claims Virginia Connects is controlled by the same individuals who govern the Data Center Coalition (DCC) trade association, of which AWS is an Executive Member, and alleges that the so-called "coordinated" campaign constitutes conspiracy to commit deceptive trade practices under Virginia law. According to the lawsuit, the legal case was filed after Dr Wangusi found no state agencies were willing to take action over discrepancies he saw in AWS’s self-reported water use and its actual recorded consumption. The complaint claims neither the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), "the State Water Control Board, local water utilities, nor affected communities possess authority to independently determine whether AWS's public water-use, water-positive, replenishment, water-stewardship, and sustainability representations are accurate, misleading, or substantiated." The filing claims Dr Wangusi submitted a complaint to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which responded that Virginia law does not require datacenters to report water withdrawals to it, and that it lacks authority to independently verify usage. A complaint to the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia resulted in a referral back to DEQ, the lawsuit states. The filing – which includes Dr Wangusi's correspondence with the agencies attached as exhibits – added that the "FOIA Advisory Council likewise advised that factual disputes concerning public disclosures are matters reserved to the courts. Accordingly, Plaintiff exhausted all available administrative remedies before filing this action." Dr Wangusi is seeking a jury trial for the case, and wants the court to rule that the published water use, and sustainability claims are materially false or misleading, and order AWS to submit to the Virginia State Water Control Board and DEQ a complete accounting of its Northern Virginia water withdrawals. If the judgement goes against it, AWS would also be required to publish corrective disclosures within 30 days of judgment, disclosing its actual water consumption figures, the methodologies, and the supporting data underlying its claims. "Hyperscalers, including AWS and its competitors, continue to face public scrutiny over the integrity of their claims around environmental impact and resource usage for datacenters,” Omdia senior analyst for Sustainable Ecosystems, Ben Caddy told The Register. “Without stricter obligations for hyperscalers to be transparent about their resource use at a facility-specific level, it’s likely that these companies will continue to face more legal and reputational challenges about the local and global environmental impacts of their facilities,” he added. We asked Amazon for a statement regarding this lawsuit, but the corporation declined to comment, other than to insist its water replenishment and withdrawal data for 2025 were assured by a third-party provider. ®
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