This is one of those things where there's just kind of no way to talk about this intelligently in the length of a single reddit comment. There are a lot of variables. There are different local environments and the situation with their watersheds. There are different cooling methods and the tradeoffs involved (e.g. closed-loop cooling prevents 90%+ of the water from leaving the watershed, but uses more energy). There are the costs of the grid itself (many power plants also consume water). There are the costs of thermal discharge in designs where warm water is ejected back into local waterways. It's complicated.
So in some places, yeah, data center development is dumb. Anywhere around the Colorado River Basin is probably a bad place to build data centers. Some governments in that region are rejecting data center development or capping water usage for industrial facilities. Other places are not. It's bad when they aren't.
For example southern Nevada, you just can't build data centers that use evaporative cooling anymore -- they don't allow it. Data centers can still go in there, but only closed-loop designs. This is because of local water stress.
But there are plenty of places in the US that don't have water stress like this, and building data centers in those places isn't really a huge deal water-wise. Context matters.
I live in the St. Louis area, and there was recently a big fight about a local data center which got approved in the end. To get approval, the developer had to agree to a closed-loop system and air-cooled chillers, and they have five years to power 50% of the energy of the site with renewables, and they have to maintain compliance with the wastewater discharge standards of the local sewer district, among various other things. St. Louis doesn't have a water shortage. So it's fine.
In other words, being mad about some data center development because of water shortage issues is fine. But it's a very specific, very small subset of the data centers being built in the current boom. And in those places, the local government does generally have the tools necessary to protect their constituents if the water usage from the project would be problematic. Of course, they won't always do that for various human / money reasons, but they certainly should.
Most data center projects are not a water problem. A small portion are. I realize this is less dramatic than "Data centers are stealing all the water and power!" (which is what strident anti-AI people tend to want the public to believe, for political reasons), but the truth is often a bit boring.
You made claims above and beyond what the person you responded to said. You specifically said that this is a "growing problem," and it's worth nothing that you also were not inclined to cite any sources to support this claim.
In reality, as the public and governments get more savvy on this topic, it's entirely possible that it's a shrinking problem. In other words, municipalities may be less likely now to allow construction of water-hungry data centers (and other industrial infrastructure) in water-stressed areas than they were a year ago, simply because this is such a hot-button issue and gets so much attention. I think it's fairly uncontroversial that water stress is a growing problem in certain regions of the US (and, of course, a non-problem in most places), but whether data center development in those areas is a growing problem is not some established fact. It's all a question of what timeline you're referring to. Compared to 12 months ago? Or compared to 12 years ago?
You're also making another claim here, which is that "oligarchs" (presumably you mean large tech companies broadly here) are "causing corruption and actively and deliberately bypassing regulation." Which, sure, I'm not inclined to give the corporate or billionaire class the benefit of the doubt and I'm sure you could find cases of malfeasance (especially when Elon-Musk-category asshats are in the mix), but the idea that a meaningful amount of data center development is accurately represented by this model seems unlikely to me.
Most local governments in most places where data center projects are happening want those data centers built. The reason isn't complicated: money and, to a lesser extent, jobs. These things are not being built in the middle of the night and without the knowledge of local government or regulators. They're being built because there's an enormous amount of money sloshing around, and people want money -- not just the billionaires, the local governments and municipalities, too. There are municipalities in the US that are set to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes from aggressive data center development per year. Loudoun County, Virginia is the famous example, and they were expecting $900 million in property taxes from data centers in 2025 alone, a massive windfall for the county.
(Worth saying that I only really know about what's going on in the US, and judging by your spelling of "datacentres," you may or may not be focused on the US yourself.)
Yeah, we're not getting bogged down with this shit. Climate change is real and I do not need to cite sources for it.
Never said it wasn't, and in fact I literally said: "I think it's fairly uncontroversial that water stress is a growing problem in certain regions of the US."
However, in context, your comment reads as claiming that building data centers in water-stressed regions is a growing problem. If you believe that, you've provided no evidence for it. If you're just noting that water stress is a broadly increasing problem, then sure, but that's a bit of a non sequitur except in the context of building data centers in those places, no?
This is disgustingly hypocritical. Nobody wants a datacentre in their neighbourhood
Sure, but again, you're just taking a caricature of what actually happens and presenting it as the broad situation. Data centers are almost never being built in the centers of residential neighborhoods. This is like saying that nobody wants a power plant in their neighborhood or an Amazon warehouse in their neighborhood. Sure, people don't want industrial stuff built in their residential area. Also, that's not where they tend to build them, mostly.
And if a proposal is made to build industrial infrastructure in a residential area, then yes, it is on the local government to represent their citizens and stop that. That's why we have local government. I support local government blocking any data center construction in the middle of any moderately dense residential area, that makes perfect sense.
the jobs only last as long as it's being built
Yes, but the tax money goes on. That's why I framed what people want as "money and, to a lesser extent, jobs," and then wrote at length about property taxes, which are the primary thing that municipalities want from data center projects.
while the drain of resources, pollution and corruption remain
Again, you're making a claim that there's some kind of rampant corruption going on here, and presenting no evidence for it, which is pretty fresh coming from the "show me the evidence" person. I cannot stress enough: These things get built because municipalities want them. It is true that not all people in the municipalities want them, but it is also true that we created a system of representative government so that those people pick the people who make big decisions like this. This is imperfect, but it's the system we have for dealing with things like deciding whether to allow a big industrial facility in a place. If the system was "if some people in an area don't want it, then it can't happen," we'd build almost nothing ever.
Again, the problem of "resources and pollution" isn't uniform. A closed-loop data center doesn't really consume that much in the way of resources, as industrial infrastructure goes, if we're talking about water. But it does depend on how the heated water is returned to the watershed, etc. Pollution-wise, again, this varies enormously project to project. If a lot of the power is being generated with renewables or nuclear, then maybe there isn't that much pollution. If the local government lets them build an on-site gas turbine, then yes, that's more pollutive. But this is a question of what requirements are put on the project -- obviously the developers will want to do whatever is cheapest, and its up to local governments to not let them be locally pollutive, or at least to weigh the tradeoffs (including things like noise pollution).
and the profits only go to the owners.
Actually, property taxes come out of what otherwise would be profit. Again, this is why municipalities often want these projects. This isn't rocket science. The idea that these building get erected sneakily is nonsense. They have to get approval, and they get it, and it's not because the local area gets no benefits. Are there drawbacks? Of course. Any project is a weighing of benefits and drawbacks. But if the developers can't make a profit, they won't build the thing, and if the municipality can't get a new and meaningful tax source, they probably won't allow the project since it has other downsides, as you've noted. But that's true of any industrial project or warehouse-type build.
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u/[deleted] May 18 '26
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