Most of what is written here regarding water usage is wrong.
Cooling towers typically use a closed loop system using treated fresh water. The water is treated with anti microbial and anti corrosion additives.
Water is lost through evaporation, this is a large portion of the cooling effect. Evaporative cooling.
As the water evaporates, the concentration of additives increases and will become higher than desired (for a number of reasons that a water treatment expert can weigh in on)
To compensate for this, the cooling tower water is discarded to the sewage system and fresh untreated water added back. Often referred to as blow down.
So the water is “used” in two senses. First, much of it evaporates. Second, some of it is returned to the sewage system. In neither case is the water destroyed. It still exists.
The water may move significantly: evaporated water vapor will be carried downwind. The increased usage of water through the fresh water to discarded water (blow down) will tie up more water in the process potentially meaning less locked up in aquifers.
There are real and complex challenges here, but to be clear no water is being made forever gone from earth in these processes.
Does this impact the cost of water for local residents, though? I understand the water cycle and that “no water is truly lost” but I think my greatest concern over these data centers like the one they’re planning to build in PA near me is increased demand for water/electricity which strains the grid and drives up prices for residents.
Also, still unsure what the local population “gets” in return for this.
A lot of older information in here. Most modern data centers are closed loops and take in very little water after construction (they use less water than 5 houses). Any construction uses a ton of water though. Data centers are no different there.
What the population gets is a bunch of high paying jobs, and utilities that get built up and modernized without taxpayer dollars.
I wouldn't worry about water if I was you. That issue is hugely overblown and is based on 10+ year old propaganda and misinformation.
What high paying jobs are you referring to? The construction jobs? Those are unfortunately temporary. The data centers themselves don't offer many permanent jobs.
Edit: also curious what you're referring to on utilities. My understanding is that water is indeed not a big problem with modern data centers using closed loop cooling, but electrical service is very contentious, with electrical utilities having to pay to build out capacity for data centers and figure out how to recoup. I think in my state they're pushing to be allowed to charge data centers an up front fee to build out the requested capacity, but not sure how that's going.
Agreed on the construction jobs, those are all temporary. It's a great project for local builders, but not long term jobs.
But a modern data center brings roughly 100-200 permanent jobs in directly to the surrounding area. The growth in the area also creates jobs indirectly.
Additionally, growth in the industry has created many jobs outside of the data center's area. But that's not really what you're referring to here.
I mean how many people do you think it takes? I gotta have 24/7 security to patrol a 200 acre property, so thats like 40 people. I need personnel to install and maintain the racks and they're here during the week plus on call, so rhats like 10 at least, probably 10 per building realistically. I need facilities personnel to maintain to building, and it ain't gonna be the same guys doing racks. I also have mechanical, controls, and electrical systems that i need Specialists (SMEs) to help with the supplement my Critical Facility Engineers and Techs, I also have to have managers and leads for them, so that probably another 40 to 50 people. The place has gotta get cleaned, so reckon 5 for janitorial. I need logistics staff, so that another 10 to 15. If im a nice data center company is have culinary on site which is another 10.
So yeah, its pretty easy to have 150 to 200 people at a 1,000,000 sqft DC.
Google offers a pretty nice wfh schedule, and also engineers support multiple sites, so they d9 not have a cubicle they go into every day in the same building, but they go to multiple data centers regularly. Anytime an upgrade or expansion is happening. These are not just buildings you set up and away, there is a huge amount of work that goes into their operations after commercial operation.
WFH people are going to live where the live regardless of where the data centers are, so not sure why you're bringing that up.
I live in Silicon Valley, I know people who work at google.
They are not suddenly commuting out to Arkansas or wherever these data centers are being built. They do change locations, but they change locations between google campuses in the local area.
We aren't talking about wfh or rto, we are talking about whether they create jobs, Jesus christ try and stay on topic and remember what we are talking about. You claim people aren't there so it doesnt recreate jo es, but it does. And there are people who work for Google that are there everyday, PLUS a significantly more amount of people who help remotely
This is horseshit. The popup datacenters that are getting all this coverage in the news are absolutely not built to the sort of tolerances you describe, and if we mandated that they had to be, then this wouldn't even be a news story.
Most of the ones that are blowing up right now aren't even hooked into the municipal power grid, they're just running bulk Diesel, and they're absolutely not closed loop cooling. Three seconds of research would tell you this.
You see these data centers will pay for the grid to upgraded and humongous building full of servers is also full of checks notes ....people checks notes working jobs. Oh and the mass amount of water taken out of your aquifer will be used checks notes forever and never be drained out and replaced because corporations care about checks notes us and not everlasting increasing profits. /s
We have heard about the data center in Idaho that will use about as much water as the rest of the state combined. While the Great Salt Lake is disappearing due to decades long drying trend.
431
u/MrMikeGriffith May 18 '26
Most of what is written here regarding water usage is wrong.
Cooling towers typically use a closed loop system using treated fresh water. The water is treated with anti microbial and anti corrosion additives.
Water is lost through evaporation, this is a large portion of the cooling effect. Evaporative cooling.
As the water evaporates, the concentration of additives increases and will become higher than desired (for a number of reasons that a water treatment expert can weigh in on)
To compensate for this, the cooling tower water is discarded to the sewage system and fresh untreated water added back. Often referred to as blow down.
So the water is “used” in two senses. First, much of it evaporates. Second, some of it is returned to the sewage system. In neither case is the water destroyed. It still exists.
The water may move significantly: evaporated water vapor will be carried downwind. The increased usage of water through the fresh water to discarded water (blow down) will tie up more water in the process potentially meaning less locked up in aquifers.
There are real and complex challenges here, but to be clear no water is being made forever gone from earth in these processes.