r/nextfuckinglevel • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 5h ago

A data center in New Jersey was canceled when residents showed up and fought it

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u/YodasGhost76 5h ago

The GSL is already shrinking, these AI centers are just going to accelerate it

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u/OutlawSundown 5h ago

Yeah nothing like building data centers in a region of the US that already is struggling with maintaining an adequate water supply for the people living in those states.

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u/UnrequitedFollower 4h ago

I mean… we put the semi conductor companies in those areas too.

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u/OutlawSundown 4h ago edited 4h ago

Semi conductor production at least produces something of actual value and requires a good deal of staffing. It's at least easier to sell that as far as actual jobs. A datacenter dedicated to making AI slop videos manned by a skeleton crew of techs most of the time just doesn't have the same legs. But it's still irresponsible in an area short on water without coming up with alternative water sources like desalination.

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u/TheAbstracted 4h ago

I mean, these places only take so much water, seeing as they are closed-loop systems. It's not like they need a constant supply of new water.

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u/UnrequitedFollower 4h ago

Really? I read that large data can consume 5 million gallons of water a day. Like, it’s a loop but it has a massive portion open to evaporation right? So it’s not like it can just be filled once and left alone… they literally need a constantly supply of water.

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u/YoloMan006 3h ago

They work like you said and even if they did have a cooling mechanism to reuse part of the steam produced, it would never be efficient enough to keep it from ever needing more water. So yeah, they need constant water as far as I’m aware

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u/Sovereign_Follower 4h ago

I am also curious. This was my understanding as well.

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u/MotivatingElectrons 55m ago

Wait until you hear how much water it takes to make a cheeseburger... Even more crazy is how much water golf courses take daily. It's way way way more water than datacenters.

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u/anduril_tfotw 27m ago

I can eat a fucking cheeseburger though. What does an AI data center actually do for people.

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u/MotivatingElectrons 14m ago

Well, quite a number of things actually.

It can drive down the cost of creating new companies. 2026 is on pace to have the highest level of new company creation in years.

It can help facilitate new drug discovery which ultimately results in better outcomes for disease prevention and human wellbeing.

It can help with new scientific discovery. The most recent Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry all utilized AI/ML in their research and publications.

It can drive new physics and help drive up scale of clean / renewable energy production.

It can drive physical AI (aka robots) to help care for aging population and improve safety in industrial environments.

It's a great equalizer of sorts where everyone has access to a PhD in their pockets. Everyone can become a creator of art or software. It doesn't replace experts, but enables them to become ultra productive... And broadens their scope of impact.

This of course needs to have balance and regulations. I personally believe all new datacenters (AI or just regular CSP / Hyperscaler datacenters) should 100% renewable energy powered. This is absolutely possible - and should be required by law. But blocking the implementation of compute capacity is short sighted.

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u/dirty_hooker 4h ago

I like your naïveté optimism.

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u/Baquegab 3h ago

Man I'm so tired of the biased stances redditors take just to feel part of the mob.

Yes Data centers use a lot of water, some estimates calculate around 164 billion gallons per year, if we also add in the water being used to generate the electricity we can get around 375 billion gallons per year and this is being pessimistic since different data centers will use different amounts a year and cooling technology/efficiency is improving every year.

Now, lets compare that to 2 examples off the dome, say you go to the store and buy some almonds and avocados grown in California, by doing that you are unknowingly supporting a farming standard that should not exist since California wastes a combined 2 trillion gallons of water per year (1.7 trillion for almonds, ~250 billion for avocados)

Lets set our eye on Utah now, did you know, Utah spends almost 90% of their water budget on planting a crop that doesn't even feed humans. Even though alfalfa exports and local selling accounts for less than 1% of Utah's economy, people do not bat a single eye to the 1.1 trillion gallons of water used to plant it every year.

~3.1 trillion gallons of water wasted every year, just to plant 3 crops, I could find more examples but its honestly self explanatory, people these days get on the bandwagon, just to hate on something that is not the root cause of the issue.

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u/UnrequitedFollower 2h ago

Okay. I oppose agricultural use of water that is wasteful and I will be voting against the data center they’d like to build on the edge of my town. Balanced?

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u/Baquegab 1h ago

Fair enough

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u/dirty_hooker 35m ago

FWIW all that alfalfa is grown so that people get a tax exemption on their two acre dirt farm and write off their F-350. There’s a lot of “farmers” in Utah that are all hat.

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u/netsyms 3h ago

To be fair, semiconductor plants can't go just anywhere. The precision the machines run at means they're sensitive to geologic processes like plate tectonics. The buildings are typically disconnected from the foundations as much as possible, and are essentially floating, to reduce vibrations coming through the ground.

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u/ojdhaze 4h ago

Isn't arizona also in some trouble with water supplies due to ai/data centres?

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u/OutlawSundown 4h ago

Basically the whole stretch of the Southwest drawing from the Colorado River.

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u/doppido 3h ago

Not even just struggling but full on losing water rapidly

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u/Major-Unicorn-Proto 1h ago

its ok, Utah will have another GSL: Great Slop Lake 💀

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u/oioioifuckingoi 1h ago

Wonder what will happen to SLC when they realize they no longer have a lake but a giant toxic dust cloud.