this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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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?