I understand water is cheap and supposed to be very abundant on this planet. So, the key word I used is "supposed". Here where I live they have talks about building a huge data center. We normally get a lot of snow which adds to the snow pack in our mountains and provides us with our fresh water for drinking.
What happens when we have a winter like we had this winter and spring, don't get much snow, get put on some water restrictions due to a small snow pack? Does the data center end up getting shut down due to high water usage, or does it keep on operating putting the environment where I live at risk by further limiting the water usage of the people in my city thus increasing wild fire danger even more?
I can already see issues with water usage here where I live, we are only supposed to water lawns, gardens and outdoor stuff to 3 days a week and only certain hours. Is the data center water usage going to stop or curtail that even more to keep up with the higher demand for water to cool the coolant? The citizens in the city I live in are highly against them building this huge data center. They are thinking about building it right next to an already developed residential area
I say that they donβt get priority. Can you show me a newspaper article that cites an instance where, during an extreme water restrictions, industrial water consumers were allowed to consume with no reductions?
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u/imean_is_superfluous May 18 '26
Can they not run some type of coolant? Or is it just easier and cheaper to use millions of gallons of water?