In Visakhapatnam, where groundwater depletion, erratic rainfall and climate variability have already created acute water stress, such a project will almost certainly intensify the crisis, diverting precious water from local residents is amounting to a grave injustice, says HRF

The Human Rights Forum (HRF) took exception to the Andhra Pradesh government's decision to enable the construction of massive Google-Adani Data Centre complexes in Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli districts with huge investments worth several billion dollars.

Visakhapatnam lies along a cyclone-prone and climate-sensitive coastline. The Madhurawada hills and adjoining lowlands already bear the scars of rampant real estate expansion that has stripped tree cover and disrupted natural drainage systems. Establishing a high-energy, heat-intensive complex of this magnitude in such a terrain is ecologically reckless, the HRF cautioned.

Google and Adani have been granted approval to establish a one-gigawatt (GW) data centre cluster spanning three sites across the two districts along with a subsea optical-fibre cable landing station to be developed by Sify Infinit Spaces Ltd. To enable this, the State government has allocated a total of 480 acres to 200 acres in Tarluvada and 120 acres at Adavivaram and Mudasarlova villages in Visakhapatnam district and 160 acres at Rambilli in Anakapalli district, the HRF said.

The HRF cautioned that these data centres will be a threat to residents of Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli as centres of this scale are notoriously water and energy-hungry, consuming billions of litres annually for cooling and maintenance across the world.

"In Visakhapatnam, where groundwater depletion, erratic rainfall and climate variability have already created acute water stress, such a project will almost certainly intensify the crisis, diverting precious water from local residents and amounting to a grave injustice," HRF state general secretary Y. Rajesh and HRF AP&TG coordination committee member VS Krishna said.

The HRF representatives said that these data centres are far from being the promised engine of jobs, green growth and digital progress, and these projects represent a looming environmental and economic disaster. It is an enterprise that risks irreversible ecological damage, massive public resource diversion and deepening corporate capture of resources under the guise of technological advancement, they added.

Referring the progress reports of the Google, the HRF said that Google's two data centers at Ashburn and Leesburg together employ only about 400 people directly, despite generating roughly 3,100 indirect jobs. These figures highlight how minimal direct employment accompanies massive capital investment. Likewise, Meta's upcoming two-gigawatt AI data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, being built at a staggering cost of $10 billion, is projected to create barely 500 permanent positions once operational.

"Experiences from similar projects, such as Google's Data Center in Uruguay, show that these facilities often generate toxic waste, emit greenhouse gases and deliver negligible local benefit," Mr. Rajesh said.

Given Vizag's hot climate, the proposed complex would require even more water-intensive cooling systems, further lowering groundwater tables and risking contamination of local water sources through chemical run off and waste discharge. Another critical concern is energy consumption. A one-gigawatt facility would demand enormous amounts of electricity, equivalent to powering a mid-size city with lakhs of homes, straining an already overburdened grid. Google's claims that this hyperscale facility will run on 100% renewable energy is technically untenable and is a false assertion. The State's grid cannot supply uninterrupted renewable power without fossil-fuel backup which makes the project's co-called 'green' credentials a deceptive façade," Mr. Rajesh and Mr. Krishna said.

In reality, data centers of this scale depend heavily on fossil fuel during peak demand, thereby generating massive carbon emissions and undermining global climate goals. It is precisely because of such environmental, energy, and water concerns, that communities around the world have mobilised against data center projects, many of them far smaller than the one being planned in Visakhapatnam and Anakapalli.

Google data centres pose threat to residents of Vizag in form of environment, water and electricity crisis: HRF