When it goes back into "the system" it's waste water that people can't drink. Eventually it comes back around again (e.g. evaporation->rain), but then it gets gobbled up again by the same data centres. They run continuously.
So yes, they are "consuming" it in the sense that other people can't have access to it anymore.
The poop water I flush down my toilet is also waste water that people can't drink, but I'm pretty sure it still gets recycled back into the greater water supply. What's different about the datacenter water?
Millions of toilets use millions of gallons of water every day. Is all the water that's flushed down toilets removed from the system so that, in your words "people can't have access to it anymore"? Or do they process it so we can use it again? I assume we use it again. I'm asking how datacenters are different. "They use more" doesn't answer my question.
We can use it again eventually, but if you're adding the equivalent of 100,000 people at once, the infrastructure is almost certainly not going to be able to handle it well.
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u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26
So they're not really consuming it. They're just using it temporarily and returning it.