Water levels across the Great Lakes are falling – just as US data centers move in

An artist’s impression of how the Aligned Data Centers project near Lake Erie in Ohio will look. Photograph: Aligned Data Centers

The sign outside Tom Hermes’s farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land.

For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life.