this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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I can't believe it: a ragebait screenshot with a mix of accurate and inaccurate details that make a bad situation look even worse. You all have frontal lobes, fellow apes. Use them to think critically, because there's a REASON memes like this want you to react emotionally and it's not in your best interests at all.
Tl;dr: the data center's usage is an issue, the local governments that facilitate and even encourage this behaviour are arguably even worse.
Truth: this shit hole data center used 30M gallons of water over the course of several months without being billed for it.
Rage Bait: they did it "illegally."
Truth: the data center fully intended and was allowed by local government to use that water in the course of its construction, but weren't billed because they didn't inform the local utility of one water hookup, and the utility cocked up by ignoring the usage for that hookup and failed to bill the center for the usage on its second hookup. The data center did exceed their usage limits, but that's not illegal: they simply pay penalties for the overage. The local utility waived these penalties because they're spineless.
Rage Bait: the exceedance caused a drop in water pressure.
Truth: the locals experiencing water pressure drops receive their water from groundwater while the data center uses surface water. Given groundwater recharge rates are painfully slow, the data center's usage did not cause the issue, though the pressure complaints led to the investigation that found the billing issues.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/data-center-used-30-million-gallons-of-water-without-initially-paying/
^^ That's the illegal part.
When a consumer hooks up a utility without informing the utility, that is "theft of services" and they are arrested.
https://www.4029tv.com/article/fort-smith-stealing-electricity/71286214
It has been clarified that the hookup wasn't without the knowledge of the utility, it was a failure of a new transmitter/verifying they were getting readings.
https://thecitizen.com/2026/05/11/behind-fayettes-qts-water-controversy-a-missed-meter-8000-workers-and-a-massive-construction-project/
I work in this realm and as soon as I read the quotes from the utility in the first batch of articles it was immediately clear that people who didn't have all the information were responding to inquiries. Your average utility employee, even in admin functions have zero media training. If I had a penny for every time I had to deal with the fallout of some ambitious comment that was taken out of context by the media or public, I'd have several pennies.