# Google's $15 billion India data centre project battles water, wildlife concerns

> Google's plan to build a $15 billion data centre hub in Visakhapatnam, in partnership with Gautam Adani's group, is running into the physical limits of the place it wants to grow. The project promises as many as 188,000 jobs, but its cooling systems would need around 480 million litres of water a day in a region that currently has about 410 million litres to go around. That gap is the whole fight. It sits just 860 metres from the Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary, and local activists have been protesting with signs reading 'We cannot drink DATA'. The Andhra Pradesh High Court is set to hear the litigation on August 24, and Google has offered advanced cooling and sound dampening to blunt the objections. This is the quieter cost of the AI boom. Every frontier model and chatbot answer traces back to buildings like this, and the story shows how the compute race increasingly collides with water tables, ecosystems and the people who live next door.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Reuters · Published Saturday, August 8, 2026_

## Wortins' read

Google's plan to build a $15 billion data centre hub in Visakhapatnam, in partnership with Gautam Adani's group, is running into the physical limits of the place it wants to grow. The project promises as many as 188,000 jobs, but its cooling systems would need around 480 million litres of water a day in a region that currently has about 410 million litres to go around. That gap is the whole fight. It sits just 860 metres from the Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary, and local activists have been protesting with signs reading 'We cannot drink DATA'. The Andhra Pradesh High Court is set to hear the litigation on August 24, and Google has offered advanced cooling and sound dampening to blunt the objections. This is the quieter cost of the AI boom. Every frontier model and chatbot answer traces back to buildings like this, and the story shows how the compute race increasingly collides with water tables, ecosystems and the people who live next door.

## Source

[Read the full story at Reuters](https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/google-15-billion-india-data-071809875.html)

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