Water and Wildlife Fights Stall Google's India Data Centre

Google's largest bet on Indian infrastructure has hit the ground, and the ground is pushing back. Work on the company's $15 billion data centre hub in Andhra Pradesh is well under way, with a hillside already stripped to red earth and cut into terraces, but a run of court cases now threatens the timeline.

The project, built with the Adani group, sits close to land that campaigners say it should never have touched. According to a Reuters report, a public interest petition in the Andhra Pradesh High Court argues that heavy construction and noise are harming the Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary, home to leopards and pangolins, which lies just 860 metres from the site. Three further cases have been filed at India's environmental court by the Human Rights Forum, which wants the work halted outright.

The water question

Water is the sharper worry. Large data centres draw heavily on local supplies for cooling, and residents fear a project of this size will compete with them in a region that already rations. The state government, run by an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has called the investment historic and transformational and denies that it was fast-tracked without weighing the risks to water and wildlife.

Google says the campus will be developed in line with applicable laws, and that it will use "advanced air cooling to protect vital local water resources." Business Standard notes the High Court is due to hear the public interest petition again on 24 August.

A pattern, not an exception

The clash is a local version of a problem the whole industry is running into. The buildout needed to train and serve modern AI is colliding with the physical limits of the places that host it, from power grids to watersheds. We have already covered how electricity, not chips, has become the binding constraint on AI expansion. In Visakhapatnam the constraint wears a different face: a court, a river, and a sanctuary full of animals that were there first.