When the county utility investigated, officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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I believe the only reasonable reaction to this would be to shut down the data center immediately until this is settled. Sounds like massive fraud. Am I expecting that to happen? Hell no.
fraud? this is plain stealing. The ones who own the data center should go to prison.
No, no... It's not like a normal person who might get caught stealing a loaf of bread or something. That person obviously would have to go to jail. But this is a business, you see. They got caught stealing $150,000 worth of water so they just had to pay the regular price for it and now everyone is happy now.
Pay for it? Are you implying they did something wrong? Oh, come on! We should beg them not to leave... Maybe if we pay them for their inconvenience...
/s obviously
At least shut off both water connections and fine the shit out of them for theft
Using tap water for cooling is such an idiotic engineering decision it feels like it was suggested by an LLM chatbot.
Power plants use water too, but they draw it from the nearby river or lake, recycle it through cooling towers, and/or dump it back out into the river or lake. Or course that has its own effects, but at least it's not depriving a nearby town of drinking water by existing.
The pipes were running just nearby the data centre, free real estate
Turn the tap off. Ask questions later. Stress test their data centre.
It's absurd that they think they can just pay for the water they stole and call it square.
unnoticed
They don't have any regulations and don't need to pay anything??
What a wild, barbaric country.
Kind of fascinating that they don't do any kind of reconciliation of water delivered against water billed. You'd think that would be an easy thing to do and a good way to discover leaks (or theft). I mean, there would definitely be 'missing' water due to leaks, fire department, etc, but one imagines that would have some kind of normal/tolerable range, and that 30 million missing gallons would trigger some kind of investigation prior to customer complaints.
It sounds like they hooked up their own water connection so the water utility didn't even know they were using the water. They can only measure usage by checking the meter attached to your hookup. I don't think its possible to measure the entire 'input' of water versus total usage like you're suggesting.
Water company can measure the water that leaves their pumping station(s) - just put a flow meter on the one big pipe. If that doesn't match the sum of all their customer meters, then water is going somewhere else - broken pipe, illegal connection, meter fraud, whatever.
I would guess that most jurisdictions already have that one big flow meter, because they have to comply with water rights agreements, have to know how much chlorine & fluoride to inject, etc.
If that doesn’t match the sum of all their customer meters, then water is going somewhere else
That's probably exactly what they did, but usually the water meter at customers is only measured or reported on once per year, so it takes months before the difference becomes clear in the data.
Maybe they do commercial customers different, but I'm about 30 miles north of the site in question, and my water use is reported in real time. I can even get a daily report from their web site. It's hard to believe they'd be less interested in the usage of their 1e6-gallon-per-year commercial customers than their 1e4-gallon-per-year residential customers.
They can only measure usage by checking the meter attached to your hookup.
Depends on the age of the system. Newer meters can be read remotely.
Same difference though. These people didn't have a meter at all because the water utility didn't connect them to the water grid. It'd be similar to someone running their own line to the nearest power pole.
a case of 'boss goto jail', hopefully!
I'm sure it'll be labeled "a mistake" and nobody will face any consequences other than the residents who don't have any drinking water.
If they tapped into the water supply without the water company's knowledge then they have a clear path to legal action. The fact that doesn't seem to be a factor makes me think this was an oversight the water company doesn't want to acknowledge. Just a hunch.
"When the county utility investigated, officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center. [...] One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge"
How could an industrial sized hookup be installed without the water company knowing? At first glance that doesn't seem possible and it's more likely someone at the water company dropped the ball or was being shady.
It's the latter. That's physically impossible at those pressures - mains access for that size of pipe is locked out (and dangerous). And it's bullshit that they "didn't know" until they got complaints about pressure - municaplities of ANY size monitor pressure for serviceability and boil order recommendations. Someone knew 100% and pretended to be dumb.
“neighbors of a data center in Georgia are steaming…”
“One resident said frustration with data centers boiled over…”
This had to be on purpose.
BULLSHIT that this went unnoticed by the water department. No fucking way!!! I worked in that field you damn well would know if 30 million gallons of water were used in one place. Especially if not tied in. I work for small water department in Texas and good size one in Oklahoma. We could track down thieves easily. Water departments track water usage. Also the water is chlorinated and they would of noticed uptick in that usage as well. Fuck whoever made this report. They knew they allow it to happen.
The puns, they meant
Yep, the author was snickering the whole time writing this.
Stole.
The datacenter stole the water. After they were caught, there were no consequences. I wonder what the consequences would be if a poor, underemployed family did something like this for their disintegrating trailer home?
Banned from water for life. Straight to the gulag.
The state of Georgia is very business friendly
Their explanation and promotional video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7LOF7KM7UhY&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D%3D
Trump country.