this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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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?