Aragon approves 48% more water for Amazon's El Burgo de Ebro data center

The Aragonese Institute for Environmental Management (Inaga) has authorized Amazon Web Services to increase the water allowance of its data center in El Burgo de Ebro, near Zaragoza, by 48%. The agency sees no significant environmental effects and is expected to extend the same decision to the AWS sites in Villanueva de Gállego and Huesca, where the company made the same request. The resolution is due in the regional official gazette in the coming days.

What the ruling requires

The project will not need an ordinary environmental impact assessment. That is not a blank check: AWS must amend its integrated environmental authorization and provide detailed data on expected consumption, supply flows, wastewater volumes, treatment systems and tank capacity. It must also comply with Legionnaires' disease and fire-protection rules, run a continuous environmental monitoring plan and restore the land when the facility is dismantled.

Why AWS wants more water

AWS filed the request in late 2024. The original design assumed 555 hours a year of water-based cooling; the consultancy report raises that to 900 hours. The company argues that after two years of operation, the approved values do not reflect the site's latest climate conditions. In exchange, it raised the temperature at which the system switches from free cooling to water cooling from 28.3 to 29.4 ºC, which the document says reduces use.

The maximum aggregate for the expanded data region is 917,603 m³ a year, or 0.92 cubic hectometers. By comparison, paper mills in the Ribera Baja use more than 20 cubic hectometers. AWS says the site draws from the Imperial Canal of Aragon and that its current demand of 36,662 m³ is 0.009% of the total. It plans a single nanofiltration treatment plant expected to recover about 70% of the water, plus on-site storage of up to 72 hours. Its savings figure, more than 10 billion liters a year by 2030, is the company's own.

Opposition and context

Ecologistas en Acción and Tu Nube Seca Mi Río objected that climate change should have been in the original application, and cited a press investigation estimating that the Huesca site used almost double its allowance. They want independent monitoring, since companies are not required to report their consumption. On 15 September the Camarera irrigation channel in the Gállego basin had its allocation cut to 35%, affecting about 4,500 hectares.

AWS puts its global investment in the region at €33.7 billion through 2035. Open questions remain over who measures each site's water use, how irrigation will rank during restrictions, and how courts will rule on the regional data-center plan, PIGA.