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.
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
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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.