The island where locals say data centres are taking their water

**The island where locals say data centres are taking their water**

Batam’s reservoirs are coming under strain as the island seeks to establish itself as a digital hub.

“Water! Water!” the crowd shouted as it rushed a compound housing data centres, carrying empty plastic bottles and jerry cans.

Around 300 people took part, all of them residents of the Indonesian island of Batam, and they were angry that the taps in their homes had gone dry, while the data centres in the new Nongsa Digital Park appeared to have enough water to keep their machines from overheating.

“Not a single drop has come through our taps for the last three months... Our water supply had been reliable until the data centres came,” Dewi Susanti, one of the protesters, told the BBC.

She said people in her village, Bakau Serip, were now relying on tanker trucks that supplied “dirty, cloudy and smelly” water.

Batam’s water utility told the BBC it was trying to improve supply, but did not say whether the disruption was connected to demand from the data centres.

BP Batam, the agency in charge of trade and industry, blamed a prolonged dry spell and rejected local claims that water intended for homes was being diverted to data centres.

This was not the first protest of its kind in Batam, where shrinking reservoirs are under increasing pressure as the island tries to become a digital hub.

After protests in August and September, authorities told companies opening data centres in Batam that they must build their own desalination plants rather than depend on reservoirs for freshwater.

But locals say they are growing more worried that they now have to compete with servers for water.

“Reliable data on data centre water use in Indonesia remains scarce, partly because companies treat it as proprietary information,” says Agus Hasan, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

“We should build [data centres] rationally, transparently, and responsibly, and insist on seeing the numbers... [Otherwise] those kept in the dark while their taps run dry will push back, and rightly so,” he adds.

Opposition to data centres has been growing around the world, from the US to the UK to parts of Asia, as tech companies invest billions in AI infrastructure.

People are concerned about how the vast, windowless buildings could alter their neighbourhoods, the constant hum of machinery, security lights that may stay on all night, and the strain this places on water and energy supplies.

Electricity powers the centres, but water keeps the servers from overheating - engineers use complex cooling systems that consume large amounts of water.

Research in the US indicates that a typical data centre uses about 300,000 gallons of water a day, roughly the same as 1,000 US households. A larger 50MW facility could use as much water as 2,200 households each day, and enough electricity to power 22,000 homes, according to Malaysia’s central bank.

It is not clear how much water or electricity the Batam data centres are using.

But the island regularly experiences water shortages, and conditions are worse this year, possibly because of a historic “super” El Niño.

With no natural freshwater sources, Batam’s 1.3 million residents depend on rainwater collected in six artificial reservoirs.

Simulations by local environmental non-profit Akar Bhumi Indonesia suggest that Nongsa reservoir, which supplies water to Bakau Serip, where Dewi lives, would dry up within a month if there were no rainfall.

“The water shortage is affecting our livelihoods... Money that should be used to buy rice is now spent on water drums,” Dewi says. “My husband has to wait up overnight to get water, and then go straight to work the next morning.”

Batam’s water utility had earlier said it would consider measures such as cloud seeding if the shortage continued. When asked about the recent protests, it referred to earlier statements.

Authorities in Batam have approved 10 data centres, six of them in Nongsa Digital Park. Two are already operating, while a third is under construction. BP Batam told the BBC that at least six more are currently being reviewed for approval.

Official figures put investment in data centres on the island at more than $6.7bn (£5.1bn) as of mid-2026, driven in part by demand from Singapore, which is only an hour away by ferry.

Singapore halted data centre construction in 2019, citing land and energy limits. It lifted the ban in 2022 after introducing new efficiency standards, prompting investors to look elsewhere.

Singapore has long promoted the Riau Islands, which include Batam, and the Malaysian state of Johor as “complementary” regions.

Johor quickly absorbed the spillover and approved data centre projects worth tens of billions. But this soon angered residents frustrated by noise, dust and water shortages. The state has since sought to regulate how much water and electricity data centres use.

Across the strait, Batam is equally appealing to investors from the US, China, Australia and Singapore because of relatively low operating costs, its proximity to Singapore and links to major subsea cable routes.

A data centre under construction in Nongsa

Nongsa is home to a 13,000-sq-m data centre by Hong Kong-based private equity firm Gaw Capital and Indonesian developer Sinar Primera. In April, Singapore’s DayOne signed a deal with an Indonesian state utility to build one of the country’s largest data centres - about 450MW capacity, enough to power 350,000 average households. In June, DayOne, chip maker Nvidia and Australian AI start-up Firmus Technologies announced a 360MW “AI factory”.

By 2030, power demand from data centres in Batam is expected to exceed 1,100MW, enough to power nearly a million homes, according to official estimates.

Meanwhile, the wave of construction is alarming locals in Batam, who are urging authorities to put their needs first.

“Don’t just sit at the top and keep approving these projects. Come down here and see for yourselves what we are wrestling with,” says Marlinda, who lives in the district of Sei Beduk, which is also facing water shortages.

“We want the government to pay attention to ordinary people,” another resident told the BBC.

“Don’t make billion-rupiah investments while ordinary people are made to suffer... We are not asking for anything extravagant. We just want our water supply restored.”