Indonesian island's water crisis deepens as data centres compete with residents for dwindling supplies

Three hundred residents stormed the gates of Nongsa Digital Park on the Indonesian island of Batam carrying empty plastic bottles and jerry cans, their anger focused on a single fact: their taps had been dry for three months while the data centres behind the compound's walls kept their cooling systems running. Dewi Susanti, who lives in the village of Bakau Serip, told the BBC that water had flowed reliably until the digital park arrived. Now her neighbourhood depended on tanker trucks delivering what she described as dirty, cloudy, foul-smelling water. The protest was not an isolated eruption. Batam, an island of 1.3 million people with no natural freshwater sources, had been convulsing under the weight of competing demands for water it simply did not have.

The island's six artificial reservoirs, which capture rainwater to supply the entire population, were shrinking faster than anyone had anticipated. Simulations by a local environmental group suggested that Nongsa reservoir—the one serving Bakau Serip—would be empty within a month if no rain fell. The timing was catastrophic. Batam's authorities had approved ten data centres, six of which would operate in Nongsa Digital Park. Two were already running. A third was under construction. At least six more were in the approval pipeline. Investment had reached $6.7 billion as of mid-2026, drawn by the island's proximity to Singapore, its low operating costs, and its connection to major undersea cable routes. Singapore itself had stopped building data centres in 2019 due to land and energy constraints, then lifted the ban in 2022 with new efficiency standards. The overflow went elsewhere. Batam became attractive. So did Malaysian Johor, which approved data centre projects worth tens of billions before residents there pushed back against noise, dust, and water depletion.

The mechanics of the crisis were straightforward. Data centres require enormous quantities of water to cool their servers and prevent them from overheating. Research from the United States suggested a typical facility consumed around 300,000 gallons daily—roughly what 1,000 households used. A larger 50-megawatt installation could draw as much water as 2,200 households per day while consuming enough electricity to power 22,000 homes. No one knew precisely how much water Batam's data centres were using. Companies treated consumption figures as proprietary information. Batam's water utility said it was working to improve supply but declined to comment on whether the data centres were the cause. BP Batam, the agency overseeing trade and industry, blamed a prolonged dry spell and denied that water meant for residents was being diverted to servers. The agency's position was technically defensible—a historic El Niño had intensified the drought—but it did not address the underlying mathematics. The island was trying to absorb massive new demand during a period of scarcity.

After protests in August and September, authorities ordered data centre operators to build their own desalination plants instead of drawing from reservoirs. It was a rational response to a resource conflict, but it came late. Residents were already living the consequences. Dewi's husband waited overnight in queues to collect water, then went straight to work without sleep. Money that families had budgeted for food now went to water drums. The water shortage was not abstract. It was a daily negotiation with scarcity, a reordering of household economics, a theft of rest.

Agus Hasan, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, framed the problem in terms of transparency and power. Reliable data on data centre water consumption in Indonesia was scarce precisely because companies kept it secret. "We should build these facilities rationally, transparently, and responsibly, and insist on seeing the numbers," he said. "Otherwise, those kept in the dark while their taps run dry will push back, and rightly so." The backlash was not unique to Batam. Communities across the United States, the United Kingdom, and parts of Asia had begun resisting data centre expansion, worried about neighbourhood change, constant machine noise, security lights burning through the night, and pressure on water and electricity grids.

Batam's trajectory suggested what happened when a region tried to absorb billions in infrastructure investment without first securing the resources to support it. By 2030, power demand from data centres on the island was projected to reach 1,100 megawatts—enough to power nearly a million homes. The water question remained unresolved. Marlinda, a resident of Sei Beduk district, which also faced shortages, appealed directly to authorities: "Don't just sit at the top and keep approving these projects. Come down here and see for yourselves what we are wrestling with." Another resident was more direct. "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." The island stood at a crossroads between two futures—one in which it became a global hub for artificial intelligence infrastructure, and one in which its residents had access to clean water. The question of whether both were possible remained unanswered.