Amazon Ridgeland data center, Ridgeland, Mississippi

Amazon is building a data center in Ridgeland, in Madison County, Mississippi, part of a planned $25 billion investment covering four data center projects across three counties. The site is part of Amazon's roughly $25 billion planned investment in Mississippi data centers and has been linked in reporting to Project Rainier, the company's giant AI computing buildout for Anthropic, though Amazon has not confirmed Anthropic as the tenant.

Amazon agreed to draw its water exclusively from the city of Ridgeland's system, estimating it will use about 93 million gallons a year, roughly what 800 Madison County households use annually. The company is paying $37 million toward expanding the city's water system, on top of a $3.6 million federal pandemic recovery grant and $1.2 million from the city itself, more than $40 million in total. The deal sets a maximum daily withdrawal of 3.67 million gallons and a peak wastewater discharge of 1.84 million gallons a day into the sewer system that flows on to Jackson, Mississippi.

Jackson's water and sewer system, still recovering after a 2022 crisis that left more than 150,000 residents without safe water and led the state to hand control to the utility JXN Water in 2023, is one reason some experts are watching the arrangement closely. Haley Gentry, assistant director of Tulane's Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy, said the deal leaves Amazon free to use far more than its estimate: "There's no binding language that would prevent Amazon from using the peak more regularly." Ridgeland public works director Alan Hart said of Amazon, "They have given us everything we've asked for, and we demanded a lot." The agreement includes no enforcement mechanism if Amazon's water use exceeds its estimate and no requirement to disclose if it does; non-disclosure agreements common in the industry shield many of its specifics from public view.

Ridgeland resident Elizabeth Partin said the arrangement made her uneasy: "It feels dirty. I understand economic pushes and things like that, but you can't do it at the deficit of the humans living here." Amazon has made what it calls a water positive pledge, meaning it intends to return more water to local systems than it draws from them. The nearby city of Jackson passed its own six-month moratorium on new data center construction on July 14, 2026, by a 5-2 council vote, the first in Mississippi.