. According to analysis by the Guardian, two-thirds of planned datacentres in the US are in drought-stricken areas. The larger centres need up to 5m gallons of water a day for cooling, equivalent to the average usage of 50,000 people. It is unclear what the plan is and whose needs will take priority between AI, agriculture and everyone else.
“People are reporting bill spikes,” [Erin]Brockovich says, reading an email from someone who says their monthly water bill went from $22 (£17) to more than $350 (£265). The threat of these centres is about more than money – it feels existential. “How will the water use disrupt the balance of nature? People are asking: “What will happen to us?”
Funny statistic but relevant:
Data Centers use about 0.06% of the USAs total Water per year.
Watering golf courses in total uses about 0.5 percent.
Not saying Data centers aren’t a problem, but… Water is not the main issue we should be focusing on with them.
*already. Data centers are just getting started with many planned, golf courses have a head start but probably less growth potential lol
That is indeed relevant, I didn’t know that, and it makes me angrier about golf courses. But something to consider is this is 0.06% new water usage that is for building something most people are actively against.
I’m not saying give up on golf courses, but data centers is where the most ire is right now, so that additional water usage out of the blue (heh) is very worth bringing up when many people are worried about the future of access to water.
I would definitely say we should give up on fucking golf courses
You a golfer? I know a few, and yeah, one of the reasons it’s harder to go after golf courses imho is there are some regular folks who genuinely like to do it
I was born in, and raised near, Pinehurst. I can tell you from a lifetime of experience, there are no golfers that are simultaneously normal and good people. They’re either abnormal or evil or both. Or they’re alcoholics.
I know of a handful of regular people who golf regularly, but it is true that they’re all some kind of jerk. I just assumed it was a coincidence.
At one time, people who didn’t smoke were the outliers.
Make them feel like pariahs and that will soon change (and heavily tax golf courses on their water usage)
Wait until you learn Arizona has one of the most golf courses in the US.
I really wish people would stop focusing on the water use of these data centers. The far scarier thing is the amount of electricity they typically use. Many are planned to use direct onsite fossil fuel generators which I’d about as bad as it can get.
The scary thing is it all combined. Sucking up millions of gallons of water while belching out tons of greenhouse gasses all to generate propaganda or to try and replace the working class.
All of it is a huge problem that all compounds. Without the water that these things have sucked up people won’t survive the heat caused by them and their power generation.
Ah yes, golf. The game mostly played by rich white men. The courses mostly owned by rich white men. It sure tracks.
Well, it is a problem for the local residents in the low income areas where the data centers are being placed. Not only is there less water for them now, but the data centers also pollutes the air and makes it life threatening for these people to breathe.
I believe it was Musks datacenters for Grok that were particularly bad with air pollution and while I forget the exact numbers of people affected, it was enough that it was concerning.
It makes total sense to me that Erin Brockovich is getting involved in this shit because it’s literally a repeat of the case that made her famous.
Sure but there isn’t a massive boom of golf courses being built and hey don’t tend to poison the water downstream.
actually, they do tend to poison the water downstream through use of pesticides etc.
Also, Data centers evaporate water to cool stuff, so idk why it would poison anything “downstream”?
Multiple ways data centers can poison the water (and several have been shown to be happening now). For starters the massive pumps they need can churn things up adding silt to the water. Then because so much of the water they use evaporates off the remaining water can become toxic from concentration of existing elements. Finally, the warmer water added back into the water supply can cause more releases of naturally occurring toxic elements from the rock bed.
Add all three together and bam, poisoned downstream.
hm… idk. Data Centers need extremely purified water, much more than drinking water so this seems implausible to me, but if you can find a concrete example i’ll definitely change my mind. I just haven’t heard of any cases of that happening.
I don’t know who told you they need water more pure than drinking water but they’re wrong. Low scaling, low corrosion, and keeping particle size below a certain threshold is all they need. It makes zero sense for them to purify the water beyond that. If you mean they filter to a smaller particle size than drinking water then some do but that’s such a small part of water treatment.
They just pump in phosphonates, adjust pH, and run it through a filter. Real drinking water treatment cares about so much more. Bacteria load, chemical concentrations, heavy metal concentration, and more come into play for drinking water (plus making sure the treatments they use aren’t toxic to humans which AI data centers don’t care about as much, unless told to by the EPA).
As for examples, Meta caused an issue through their pump churn. Though that one is disputed it’s one of those cases of “what changed”? And it turns out Meta adding a data center was the only thing.
An Amazon data center has been linked to increasing concentration of nitrates. Yes it was already a problem in the area but evidence does show they’ve made it worse.
Adding warmer water back is a known issue from even before data centers. (That’s just one example paper, and from when it was only generating around 1GW of power was already a concern, there are more, it’s just the one I had open in a tab already for a different reason). xAI is currently being looked into to see if they’ve increased arsenic concentrations from the aquifer they draw from.
These are just some examples but the evidence is mounting that we don’t even know what the full impacts will be. There’s more out there. Environmental studies about the increasing toxicity of lakes in Utah that will increase with those data centers, increasing algal bloom from increased nitrate concentration and higher water temps, and so on.
ah, fair enough. I guess I was wrong, thanks for providing this!
Do golf courses take water out of the cycle though? Data centers take the water and put it in their system. Golf courses use it to water grass which means it all ends up back in the environment. I imagine most of the golf courses water usage is just wasted (for them)and evaporates vs data centers who take water away.
uh, no. you’re wrong. If data centers had a closed water system, they wouldn’t be “using” any water, effectively. Right now, data centers use water to cool their computers and to do that, they evaporate water.
Golf courses also don’t take water out of the system.
And also, water shortages have other causes, much more systemic, that I feel the datacenter scapegoat is a convenient distraction from.
You can cool chips with air, you can cool them with the sea or with non drinkable water. If they really get built in places where water is scarce, the problem is why the hell are they incentivized for that?
Water is plentiful and there should be no shortage of it. Where it is lacking it is either an environmental problem (desert areas should not be supposed to sustain cities) or a public infrastructure problem.
Sure water is plentiful but drinkable water is not.
Ibam not saying this is wromg but I have also heard a lot of the water use is in generators they basically run all the time for smoother power. And I could definitely see these companies “segmenting off” the power generation to make these numbers look better to the already angry public.
Like mayne the center and servers itself uses little, but the power generation may not.
Mostly, I really want more raw info on this that I keep seeing pushed.
You’ve got that backwards. The power generation is an issue in and of itself but from a water standpoint it’s not the main driver.
Servers require massive amounts of energy to run their calculations, a lot of that energy becomes residual heat. It’s just basic physics we’ve not been able to overcome. Old data centers weren’t as bad because they’d be also full of hard drives and tape backups and other things. Not just processors. These other things didn’t generate anywhere near as much heat and weren’t as dense. The new AI datacenters are just packed basically every square inch with processors, they’re insanely dense compared to the old data centers and filled with the highest heat generators.
In order to keep the things from melting the heat is moved and radiated using the water, this causes a large chunk of it to heat up and evaporate. You won’t get raw info on how much because they’ve tried extremely hard to not let it get released, calling it a trade secret and such. Water to cool data centers isn’t new and the physics of it is well understood (which is why hobby gamers use liquid coolers and such too), it’s just never been at this scale before. It’s not been millions of gallons a day per center.
Averaging water use over the entire US is basically meaningless, water use in Michigan is vastly different from water use in Texas.
but it’s averaged for both, so idk what you mean
And it’s meaningless for both. Neither of them mean anything.
Not a lot of data centers in deserts.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of golf courses either though. Pretentious bullshit sport that takes up way too much space.
Are there fishes inside data center water reservoirs because there are in golf course ponds. You can even fish there.
Most data centers draw their water from municipal sources, which are largely natural or engineered reservoirs, so I’d wager that yes, there are fish in those reservoirs. Depending on local rules, new industrial campuses are required to have their own drainage ponds for storm runoff, so it’s likely that many of those data center drainage ponds would also be home to some wildlife.
Not defending data center water usage, just answering your question. Additionally, fishing is far from the reason why golf courses consume so much water, it’s just a happy little side hustle. If it were then what your statement is alluding to might, dare I say, carry more water.
Shhh…you want an angry mob after you?!
Uh… She meant to say that AI requires blood sacrifices of fully hydrated babies, and once the AI ingests the blood water it’s gone forever. We need to get our pitch forks and put an end to the demonic sacrifices! We don’t need no hallucinations, plagiarized slop and climate-change-causing demons in our computers! Ban AI and kill it before it can lay it’s eggs!
Okay, you should be good now. Just nod along, and never ever admit to having used AI, or even think about informing people there are positives to using it or there are worse things to do than use it.
Some people finding AI the technology useful doesn’t justify this massive all-in rollout of data centers. Sure it’s their money, but they’re using all our resources to build stuff that no one asked for, and actively making life shittier for many many people.
It’s even mentioned in the article
Unfortunately, the “twice the size of Manhattan” line doesn’t hit with the majority of the country who has simply never been to a city nearly that large.
Fuck off
There’s one of the prestigious, intelligent, always correct members of the mob now. Aren’t they charming?
Yes, yes, prole, we know the AI hurt you and it’s very evil. We won’t let it get you.
No one here has ever used AI, and they never will.
Cute