Microsoft Queretaro data center, Querétaro, Mexico

Microsoft's Mexico Central cloud region, a group of data centers around Querétaro, opened in May 2024 as the company's first cloud region in Mexico. Microsoft first announced the $1.1 billion project in 2020. One of its data centers is in the semi-desert municipality of Colón, which has been in a two-year drought.

Neither Microsoft nor Querétaro's government would tell the Thomson Reuters Foundation's Context how much water the Colón data centers use. Microsoft said its Querétaro data centers use water for cooling less than 5% of the year. "If there is no water for the population, much less will there be water for the companies," said environmental activist Teresa Roldán.

Three years after the project was announced, Microsoft obtained a concession to draw 25 million liters a year from an aquifer for one of its two Colón data center units. That is 24% of the water Querétaro allocates to the municipality for public and urban use, according to Mexico's water regulator. Querétaro's minister of sustainable development, Marco del Prete, said "blaming data centers for water shortages oversimplifies the problem, as water issues predate their arrival."

Residents of Viborillas, a town surrounded by data centers, say some homes get water only three days a week and have gone without it for a month, resident Brenda Almaraz told Mexico Business News. Groups including the National Antorchista Movement and Voceras de la Madre Tierra are pressing the state for transparency on how much water the data centers use. Querétaro has 12 operating data centers and plans for up to 10 more, including a $4.8 billion CloudHQ project announced in September 2025 to build six data centers by 2027.