Amazon shares details on new water conservation projects

NEW CARLISLE, Ind. — Amazon Water Stewardship Lead, Will Hewes, spoke with ABC57 Wednesday about two water conservation projects coming to northwest Indiana.

These projects include a “Smart Irrigation” system that helps farmers know when to irrigate their crops and save water, as well as a “Smart Wetlands” project, which works to remove excess nutrients from water coming out of farms.

The irrigation product, led by Arable technology, is a group of AI-driven sensors that are already installed on nine area farms and available for those farmers to use free-of-charge.

The Wetlands Initiative, a conservation non-profit, is working with Amazon to add man-made wetlands to farms in the community. Those wetlands would be placed in low yield areas on a farmers property so that productive land wouldn’t be taken over.

Amazon says these two projects are expected to conserve or improve the quality of at least 100 million gallons of water every year.

Part of their efforts including trying to be “water positive” by 2030, meaning Amazon wants to put more water into the community than they take out for data center use.

Amazon added that their global water use efficiency has improved by 40% since 2021, and water is used to cool data centers just 2% of the year.