Former AWS water manager sues over Northern Virginia data center claims

Amazon Web Services is facing a Virginia lawsuit that accuses the cloud provider of publishing misleading claims about water use and sustainability at its Northern Virginia data centers. The case, filed in Arlington County Circuit Court, seeks a jury trial and disclosure-related remedies in one of the world’s densest data center markets, where water consumption has become a constraint on cloud and AI infrastructure growth.

The named plaintiff is Dr. Nathan Wangusi, a water resources scientist who worked as AWS’s water sustainability program manager for nearly three years until September 2024. According to the complaint, case number CL26002535-00, AWS has not publicly released its actual water consumption in Northern Virginia, while making public statements that the lawsuit says are false, misleading or unsupported.

Wangusi alleges that he obtained billing and water consumption records for AWS facilities in the region through public records requests to local water utilities covering 2023 through 2026. The lawsuit claims those records differ materially from figures AWS has reported publicly.

Disputed water metrics

A central target of the complaint is an AWS blog post published last month. In that post, AWS said it had cut water use in Northern Virginia by 42% year over year while compute demand continued to rise. Wangusi’s filing says AWS did not identify the comparison period, reporting boundary or methodology behind that percentage, which the complaint argues makes the claim impossible to verify independently.

The lawsuit also says AWS did not make clear whether its water withdrawal figures cover only AWS-owned data centers or also include colocation sites in the region operated by Equinix, QTS, Digital Realty and Iron Mountain, where the complaint says AWS infrastructure is deployed.

Wangusi also challenges AWS’s statement that it is “75 percent of the way to water positive.” The lawsuit alleges that, in Northern Virginia, public records data and Amazon’s own portfolio show water returns equal to 22% to 25% of documented consumption. The complaint says the 75% figure is a global metric and includes 17 projects that are still under construction.

Another disputed statement concerns cooling. AWS has said its Northern Virginia data centers operate 97% of the year using outside air and no water. The lawsuit alleges that utility records show AWS facilities withdrawing water throughout the year from January 2023 to December 2026, including winter months when AWS says water cooling is largely unnecessary.

Trade group also named

Virginia Connects, a data center lobbying group, is also named as a defendant. The complaint alleges the group ran a coordinated video advertising campaign on the same day AWS published its 42% reduction claim and promoted similar messages that Wangusi characterizes as false.

The lawsuit claims Virginia Connects is controlled by the same people who govern the Data Center Coalition trade association, where AWS is an executive member. Wangusi alleges the campaign amounts to a conspiracy to commit deceptive trade practices under Virginia law.

According to the complaint, Wangusi filed the case after state agencies did not act on discrepancies he believed existed between AWS’s public claims and utility records. The filing says the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality told him state law does not require data centers to report water withdrawals to the agency and that it lacks authority to independently verify usage. A complaint to the Virginia Attorney General’s office was referred back to the DEQ, according to the lawsuit.

Wangusi is asking the court to find that AWS’s water-use and sustainability claims were materially false or misleading. He also wants AWS ordered to provide the Virginia State Water Control Board and DEQ with a full accounting of its Northern Virginia water withdrawals and, if judgment goes against the company, to publish corrective disclosures within 30 days that include actual consumption figures, methods and supporting data.

Amazon declined to comment on the lawsuit, according to The Register, other than to say its 2025 water replenishment and withdrawal data were assured by a third-party provider. Ben Caddy, senior analyst for sustainable ecosystems at Omdia, told The Register that hyperscalers are likely to face more legal and reputational pressure without stricter facility-level transparency requirements.

This story draws on original reporting from The Register.