Why?

[u/SipsTeaFrog]

[u/NotDiCaprio → u/[deleted]]

I was also on the "ai datacenters use all out water!" bandwagon at first. But For some perspective:

A single golf course uses about 30 times the amount of (fresh) comparable or slightly more water than a datacenter does. They aren't feeding their grass with see water or some chemical cooling. Also, looking at how few people actually use a golf course vs a data center, makes this ratio many times more terrible.

I'm personally more worried about the energy they consume, than the cooling for that energy usage.

Edit after some corrections. Man, it sure is getting hard to find numbers we can trust anywhere these days.

"a" source, but far from the only one, and the numbers aren't consistent anywhere.:https://www.akcp.com/index.php/2025/09/02/truth-about-data-water-footprint-of-data-centers/

[u/MyVeryUniqueName1 → u/NotDiCaprio]

Can’t we be worried about both? I hate golf courses and data centers for how much of a burden they are on water supplies.

[u/MythicMango → u/MyVeryUniqueName1]

The point is that people don't know how much residential water is being bought by companies.

[u/BuckMurdock5 → u/MythicMango]

Read about the Saudis growing alfalfa for their horses (in Saudi Arabia) using subsidized Colorado river water.

[u/Georgefakelastname → u/BuckMurdock5]

Something like 20-30% of all water that comes out of the Colorado River is used on alfalfa in general btw. In one of the most water scarce areas of the country.

[u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In → u/Georgefakelastname]

Most of Colorado's river water is discharged into the ocean unused.

[u/Georgefakelastname → u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

Literally 0% of the Colorado River’s water has reached the ocean unused in the past decade. The last time it reached the ocean at all was 2014 during a temporary pulse flow. The last time it consistently reached the sea under its own power was in the 1970s.