SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed seven new data center regulations into law Monday, as public concerns about the facilities’ demands for water and electricity have reached a fever pitch.

Newsom signed a raft of bills that require data center operators to report their water consumption and pay for upgrades to offset any increased electricity grid demands.

“While the Trump administration moves toward deregulation, communities are left to deal with the consequences — higher electricity demand, grid constraints, water use, and pollution,” he said in a statement. “With these laws, we are ensuring that Californians remain in the driver’s seat — and that those profiting from data centers aren’t doing so at our expense.”

One of the measures was a resurrected measure from Assembly member Diane Papan, D-San Mateo. The governor vetoed a similar bill last year that would have required data centers to disclose their water usage when applying for licenses.

At the time, Newsom said he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details on this sector without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.”

In the year since, communities across the U.S. have railed against data centers as the facilities have expanded, leading to increased electric bills for ratepayers, due to developments in artificial intelligence.

Some areas have adopted or are considering moratoria on data centers. Concerns about AI have also surged in recent weeks as an Anthropic researcher claimed top companies aren’t taking seriously the technology’s threat to humanity. OpenAI and Anthropic executives have also called for increased federal oversight, as several of their agents have gone rogue and hacked rival companies.

President Donald Trump, whose family has heavily invested in AI, has downplayed anxieties as a “hoax.”

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