With Yorkville residents’ water bills set to increase about 20% over the next five years, the city released a statement to respond to residents’ concerns the increases could be connected to the incoming data centers.

While data centers require significant amounts of water to cool their computer hardware, the city said the region’s water infrastructure issues began long before any talks of data centers.

The source of the problem lies underground. Yorkville, like many surrounding communities, such as Joliet, currently source its water from the Ironton-Galesville underground aquifer. Studies by the Illinois Geological Survey found that the aquifer is being depleted at twice the rate it’s being replenished.

An explosion of subdivisions and new residential areas, turned Kendall County into the fastest growing county in the state. The county’s population exploded 8.4% from 2019-2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The consequences of fast growth are evident in Yorkville School District 115’s classroom capacity crisis, likely leading to a public referendum to approve new buildings and expanded facilities, costing up to $281 million.

The consequences are also reflected in the Lake Michigan Water sourcing project, with costs shared between Yorkville, Montgomery and Oswego tax payers.

The project initially was projected to cost $300 million, with Yorkville footing $100 million. However, bidding for the first leg of the pipeline extension project in DuPage County is ballooning in costs, likely making the project cost about $400 million total.

The city says this is where Yorkville residents’ higher water bills come from. The first Lake Michigan water coming down the new pipeline will be 2028.

“If no data centers are ever built in Yorkville, the city would still need to move to a Lake Michigan water source,” the city said in a post. “Yorkville is restricting data center projects proposed water use so that data centers, if built in Yorkville, will use less water than a residential subdivision on equivalent acreage.”

While Yorkville city officials have green-lit about 3,000 acres of former farmland for manufacturing data center warehouse development, dramatically altering Yorkville’s landscape, not a single building has yet been built.

Likely the first to be constructed will be the 228-acre CyrusOne data center project, consisting of nine warehouses.

The CyrusOne project is projected to use 393 gallons of water per acre per day. The other data center project proposals will use between 236-333 gallons of water per acre per day, according to city officials.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates the average American household can use slightly more than 300 gallons of water per day. Following the math, the 228-acre CyrusOne data center project will use the same amount of water daily as 300 average homes.

The city is requiring data centers to pay the same water rates as all other customers on the city’s water system.

Yorkville is requiring all data centers to use air-cooled or closed-loop water cooled systems that use water in a less intensive matter than traditional water-cooled systems.

If all of the proposed data centers are fully built out, they are estimated to use about 200 million gallons of water per year, according to a June presentation by city administrator Bart Olson before city council. This is roughly one-quarter the entire water usage of all of Yorkville annually.

It would be like adding the water usage of about 1,827 new homes.

Olson said during the presentation that the 500-acre Project Steel data center campus would use about 47 million gallons of water annually at full build-out.

While the city says the Lake Michigan water sourcing project precede any plans for data centers, the city’s comparison of water rates to residential doesn’t match any future development plans.

It is unlikely the city would have green-lit an additional 3,000 acres of residential development.

What about electricity rates?

While the city says data centers don’t directly impact rising water rates, surging electricity bills are a different story.

ComEd informed the city that electricity bills are increasing across the state, in-part to accommodate the massive energy demands from new data centers.

However, ComEd said the bills are increasing for Illinois residents regardless of where the data centers are constructed. This means if the currently proposed data centers switch from Yorkville to another town, Yorkville residents will still see the same increases on their energy bills.