The residents who were told to stop watering their lawns now know exactly where their water went.

The recent moderate to severe drought in the US state of Georgia had a particular strain on Fayette County water resources, leading local officials to impose conservation measures on households.

However homeowners in a nearby subdivision reported unusually low pressure, prompting urgent complaints to authorities, who initially focused on directives to halt lawn watering without disclosing the underlying cause.

But the county soon discovered that a massive data center campus was the real source of the problem, as the Quality Technology Services (QTS) facility, known as Project Excalibur, had been drawing roughly 29 million gallons of water through two connections that the county did not even know existed.

Unauthorized ...