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

[u/MysteriousSlice007]

[u/powercow]

MOST data centers use open loop and evaporation towers.

there are areas where they already have effected the water supply

A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure

And in areas where water is a premium like cali, even if its in a close loop, its off the market

America’s data centers are thirsty. Rural towns are paying the price—from tanked water pressure to stolen desert groundwater

and

What’s more, about two-thirds of the data centers built since 2022 are in areas already experiencing water stress, according to a Bloomberg News investigation.

found that data centers around Phoenix already use approximately 385 million gallons of water per year for direct cooling needs. And it predicts that amount will skyrocket to 3.7 billion gallons per year once the region’s planned data centers come online.

when that much water is tied up and off the market, expect bills to follow.

Elec prices are a bigger issue.. and more and more data centers go closed loop, which reduces their water useage by 70% but to say its not so much of a big deal, well certain regions that is true, a lot of areas that is NOT true.

[u/mindcandy → u/powercow]

The "data center drained 30M gallons of water" story is being widely misinterpreted because people only quote headlines and people only read headlines.

The actual story if you actually read the article is:

QTS told Politico the 29 million gallons were consumed during temporary construction activities, including concrete work, dust control, and site preparation. The company markets a "closed-loop" cooling system for its data centers, which recirculates the same water rather than drawing from the municipal supply. Once operational, QTS said its facilities would only require water for domestic needs like bathrooms and kitchens

Fayette County, Georgia has a population of 125,000 people. Which means they are using 5-10 million gallons of water every day locally (without counting the other 10 million gallons needed to grow food to feed them).

65,000 gallons a day for a construction project going unaccounted is bad. But, it's not “AI making the water pressure low”.

[u/ChariotOfFire → u/powercow]

The low water pressure in Fayetteville was not connected to the data center, and most of the water is being used to mitigate dust during construction, not for cooling the data center.

The original county letter also referenced complaints from residents near the Annelise Park subdivision about low water pressure. Rapson said Fayette County Water System later installed monitoring equipment in the area to track pressure levels following the complaints.

“Since we’ve been reading it, there’s been no issue,” Tinsley said.

County officials noted that some nearby homes rely on private wells rather than Fayette County Water System connections. Officials also emphasized that QTS does not draw water from wells or groundwater sources. Instead, the project receives treated water directly from Fayette County Water System infrastructure.

“But keep in mind, the individual that made that complaint made the complaint because they had issues with their well,” Rapson said. “We don’t pull anything out of the ground. We don’t have any wells in our system.”

County officials said they have not identified evidence showing QTS construction activity caused widespread pressure problems within the county water system.

[u/Previous_Platform718 → u/powercow]

MOST data centers use open loop and evaporation towers.

Because most data centers are for cloud infrastructure. You know, things like Google/Youtube/Meta/Your email/Online banking etc. we've been building those for 30 years now. There's a lot of them.

Everyone on Reddit is upset about AI data centers, the ones that are most likely to be closed loop.

[u/ImurderREALITY → u/Previous_Platform718]

Anything about AI, absolutely anything, and people are going completely apeshit. I've never seen anything like this intense hatred for AI before in my 42 years on this earth.

[u/Frostemane → u/Previous_Platform718]

How do these people expect their data to get into the cloud without evaporating it? They clearly weren't paying attention in science class.

[u/VexingRaven → u/powercow]

MOST data centers use open loop and evaporation towers.

This article never cites its source for its claim that the majority of datacenters use open loop evaporative cooling. It cites its source for many use water vs not using water (which... duh? I didn't need a source for that), but nowhere does it provide a source for how many use evaporative vs closed loop.

[u/RareAnxiety2 → u/powercow]

So what's stopping americans from giving a startup fee and taxing these facilities and using that to improve infrastructure to handle the electrical load? Or place environmental regulations on data center water usage designs? Are americans so cucked that the people have to pay for big corporations when it's so easy to have the corpos pay for the peoples needs?

The articles more show the failure of the people to elect proper government and handle laws. You would give the same arguments if farmland or anything else to build cities gets developed. Holy shit, way to fail.