WATER/DRINKING WATER: Provides relative to permitting and reporting of water usage at data centers

This bill establishes a new regulatory framework in Louisiana to oversee water usage at large data centers, specifically those with a capacity of one hundred megawatts or more. It grants the Department of Energy and Conservation the authority to issue water use permits for these facilities and requires them to develop specific rules by August 2027. The legislation also mandates that permits include a unique identifier for each project to improve transparency and ensures that agricultural water users remain exempt from these new requirements. Additionally, the Department of Environmental Quality must hold public hearings for data center permits and implement a system to assign unique identifiers to projects within one year of the law taking effect.