this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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Honestly question though ....
Does a data centre actually pollute or dirty the water when used to cool it's stuff?
Could it not just take the water, run it through the system, heat the water a little bit to cool the stuff it needs, then run the water back into the city lines which might even save people a few cents on the water heating bills?
The problem is that's not what happened here. This data center is under construction. It's not operational yet. So the construction used this water over a period of months for dust control and mixing concrete and so on and weren't billed for it.
Also, the way data centers are supposed to use cooling is something called a closed loop. It's similar to what you have in your vehicle. Or a liquid cooling setup in a computer. So the water isn't supposed to go back into the cities water table or their treatment system.
The water from the construction will do that but it is no longer potable so it has to be retreated to be safe to drink etc.
Infrastructure in this country is already fucked. These old pipes were not built to carry hot water. That's how you get nasty shit to leech into it.
My question, which seems to have no answer beyond, "it costs money," is: why the fuck does the water they use need to be potable in the first place? Grey water is a thing. You don't use treated drinking water for this shit, it's such an insane waste of resources.
If anything, at the very least, these data centers should be forced to house their own treatment plants to treat the water when they're done with it so it can re-enter the system.
In a closed loop cooling system for a water cooled PC you use distilled water to prevent things growing in it which would require the system to be purged and cleaned and refilled. Which would use more water. So for cooling a data center I'm sure it's a similar deal.
They can probably use grey water for the construction (which is where the 29 million gallons of water were used in this instance), so I don't know why they didn't other than the sheer amount of water needed and whether or not grey water was available to be used.
So what you're telling me is that "it would cost more."
Yes. I know.
More grey water. Not potable drinking water.
Sorry, I just don't believe that corporations with this much money and resources couldn't figure out a way to cool it without using drinking water. That's bullshit.
I have one question. Where exactly are you expecting them to get that amount of gray water?
A data center uses approximately 600,000 gallons of water annually. Of that, it looks like the closed loop cooling system uses 25% of that (150,000 gallons).
Where are they slurping up 150,000 gallons of gray water from? They aren't keeping rain tanks on the premises to feed into the system when they start the whole thing up. Are they just slurping it up from a lake? Why is that preferable? And let's say they do that? Algae bloom in the cooling system causing them to gobble up 150,000 gallons more water is better?
Even construction sites (who are used this water in the article by the way) use potable water because not doing so effects how much time it takes for concrete to set.
What I'm saying is, yeah, data centers as a whole for AI are bullshit. By the same token, the internet you use everyday (without any AI use at all) also uses data centers and they also use the same kinds of resources (because the majority of water used in AI that effects the environment detrimentally comes from training models, not from AI use from the general public).
So are you also mad at all the other data centers or just the AI ones?
The “it costs money” argument comes after the center is built and they’re talking about fixing the issue they won’t really fix. During construction they lied their asses off and said they would use some fraction of the amount of water they actually do so everyone said sure here’s your permit. I’ll but a dozen donuts that’s what happened.
I was wondering the same thing. Turns out thermal pollution is a thing. They would heat a lake at that rate.
There are ways to cool water and recycle it. If they are using that much water, I bet they cannot cycle water because it wouldn't cool fast enough.
No. Heating the water a little bit would not be sufficient at cooling what the datacenters need to cool. You have to heat the water a whole hell of a lot.
This could have been amazing if integrated into a district heating network.
Well, yes it wouldn't heat it a "little bit" at the source but once added back into the system the average increase would probably be a "little bit".
You’re basing that on what exactly