Hundreds of Batam residents protest at data centers: no running water for months

On October 5, hundreds of residents of Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, gathered at the gates of Nongsa Digital Park and demanded water. They say the taps in their homes have been dry for months, while the data centers next door keep pulling heat away from their servers. BBC reported the protest, and The Next Web picked up the story. The available rewrite does not make clear how much water the data centers actually consume or what their operators say. But the image itself, dry pipes on one side and cool GPU racks on the other, has quickly become a symbol of the conflict over AI infrastructure.

What happened at the gates of Nongsa Digital Park

The protest took place at the entrance to the technology park that houses the data centers. Participants did not demand that the facilities be shut down. Their complaint is simpler and harsher: people get water first. The protesters link the outages in their homes to the data centers, which need large volumes of water for cooling.

Caution is needed here. The report offers no independent assessment of what caused the outages: aging pipe networks, low reservoir levels, or competition with industrial users. The claim of a link to the data centers comes from residents, and only data from the water utility and the operators can verify it.

Why Batam

Batam has long been positioned as Singapore's neighbor, a place to move whatever is cramped or expensive in the city-state: manufacturing, warehouses, and now computing capacity. Singapore has limited the construction of new data centers because of shortages of land and energy, and part of the demand is naturally shifting to the nearest Indonesian islands. For the region, that means investment and jobs.

The island has a weak point. Batam depends largely on rainwater reservoirs rather than large rivers, so its water supply is limited. When industrial cooling is added to such a system, any dry spell or breakdown turns into a household crisis.

What is known so far

• Location: Nongsa Digital Park, Batam island, Indonesia. • Date of the protest: October 5, 2026. • Participants: hundreds of residents. • Main complaint: homes have had no running water for several months. • Alleged cause, according to the protesters: data center water consumption for server cooling. • Source of information: BBC report, rewritten by TNW. • Not confirmed: data center consumption volumes and the operators' official position.

Water becomes a line item in the AI budget

Until now, the conversation about AI infrastructure has revolved around electricity: gigawatts, substations, power contracts. Water took second place. The protest in Batam shows that for local residents the order is reversed. They don't see megawatts; they see an empty tap every morning.

For the industry, this is a different kind of risk. It is not a technology problem, and a new chip will not fix it. The denser the racks of accelerators, the more heat has to be removed, and the sharper the question of how to do it: with water, with air, or with a closed-loop liquid circuit.

What operators and investors should check

First: look at a site's water balance before choosing it, not after launch. That requires data on reservoirs, seasonal fluctuations, and the priority given to household consumption.

Second: require projects to disclose water consumption per megawatt of IT load, along with a drought plan. Closed-loop and air cooling cost more in energy but remove some of the grounds for complaint.

Third: agree in advance with local authorities and the water utility on who gets water first during a shortage. The reputational damage from footage of a protest at the gates is usually greater than the savings on cooling.

Two things are worth watching: the response from the Nongsa Digital Park operators and data from local utilities. Until those appear, the story remains a strong signal, but not a proven accusation.