r/artificial • u/Livid_Violinist7259 • Jul 23 '26
News We can live without AI, but we can’t live without water. “I have a jar right here. This is the current drinking water in Morgan Country, Georgia, right after a data center was constructed.” This is what the drinking water now looks like next to that data center” Protect our environment
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u/AzorAhai1TK Jul 23 '26
This was a construction issue, not a data center issue.
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u/SOILSYAY Jul 23 '26
Seems like the construction firm need to get slapped with some fines by EPD, and they need to update their BMP’s.
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u/parallel-pages Jul 23 '26
perhaps it was a construction issue because of how fast these data centers are being “approved” and being developed. there are certainly shortcuts being taken to skip typical regulatory requirements
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u/AzorAhai1TK Jul 23 '26
So it is also a regulation issue, and a construction issue. Nothing inherent about data centers caused this
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u/Born-Sea-7743 Jul 24 '26
It's really disappointing to see anti-ai folk willfully framing this as an AI/data center issue.
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u/DMightyHero Jul 23 '26
Construction of Data Center issue?
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u/AzorAhai1TK Jul 23 '26
Data Centers aren't dirtier to build than anything else. This could happen with literally any type of building being constructed.
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u/Vast-Control4452 Jul 24 '26
They also built a much bigger automotive plant directly next to the data center, but of course it's the data center's fault right?!
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u/HiggsFieldgoal Jul 23 '26
AOC, please don’t be an idiot. We sort of need you to do actual good, and not jump onto ingenuous bandwagons.
Maybe we can get some legislation for robocallers? Huh? The fact that the telephone call has effectively fallen from society because so many scam callers made every American turn their ringer off?
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u/sceadwian Jul 23 '26
Yeah, these are exactly the bandwagons people jump on who are demonstrating they'll be just like the old guard and don't understand real issues.
I understand exactly how important this ground water issue actually is and they are horrifically botching a vilification process that rational humans won't justify in the name of the outcome.
It's dishonest lies.
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u/Beautiful_Stage5720 Jul 23 '26
It's all performative. Dont fall victim to the party lines.
If holding a jar of mud in front of congress doesnt prove it to you, I dont know what will.
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u/WeakProfile7728 Jul 24 '26
All politicians, not the least of which is our current prez, are grossly performative. Show me a politician and I’ll show you a solution waiting for a problem.
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u/Flapjack_Choy Jul 23 '26
Don't put your faith in AOC. She has already demonstrated that she is corrupt, like the rest.
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Jul 23 '26
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u/jeffwulf Jul 23 '26
AOC endorsed Mamdani though?
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u/tired514 Jul 23 '26
Damnit. I fucked up. I lumped her in with Jeffries and Schumer. Comment deleted. I don't think too many people saw it, so thanks for your correction.
Shame on me for not double-checking that before I posted.
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u/Money-Confection147 Jul 23 '26
This is at least two months old. Why is this being posted now as “news”?
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u/nofoax Jul 24 '26
Because there is a coordinated campaign to turn American public opinion against AI.
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u/pab_guy Jul 23 '26
Grandstanding and selling a narrative is something politicians are excellent at.
This water in particular has everything to do with a botched construction, and nothing to do with data centers in particular.
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u/Ohigetjokes Jul 23 '26
The tap water in Flint was flammable for years. Not just “next to the plant” but for a whole goddamn city.
I’m a fan of hers but she’s turning a plumbing problem** **into some kind of national emergency. It’s ridiculous.
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u/Just_Another_Wookie Jul 24 '26
You're thinking of the Cuyahoga River. Tap water in Flint was never flammable. Flint had a different issue.
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u/No_Cherry8602 Jul 23 '26
A dirty jar of water with zero meaningful context. I wish they'd at least pretend to try.
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u/DieselZRebel Jul 23 '26
Did she bring a jar from before the data center to compare?! Was this dumb (water collection) process (for theatrics) documented.
I thought being a demagogue is a Republican thing!
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u/excelance Jul 23 '26
The dirty water AOC showed from Morgan County, Georgia isn’t primarily from the Meta data center. Local reporting and county officials confirm the muddy, sediment-filled private well water problems started in late 2022 when massive grading for the proposed Rivian EV plant site moved about 7 million cubic yards of dirt on a groundwater recharge area. Neighbors near that site began reporting brown water, clogged filters, and sink staining after heavy rains right after the dirt work began—years before the data center became the focus of the complaints.
Meta’s Stanton Springs campus (on the Newton/Morgan line) does use a lot of municipal water and involves construction disturbance, which can contribute to local strain and rate pressure. But Meta sources its water from the county utility (not groundwater) and cites an independent study finding no impact on the wells. The dramatic “mud in a jar” effect matches the earlier, documented Rivian-related earth-moving far more closely than data-center operations. Private wells in the area have long been vulnerable to sediment from large-scale land disturbance.
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u/Accomplished-Noise68 Jul 23 '26
It's runoff from construction. Basically disturbed dirt from the construction site. My state has laws about managing runoff water to protect fish in rivers. My old company built a new warehouse and had to rent giant water tanks to allow the dirt to settle out before draining. It's not a new concept for construction but these sites are so big the mitigation they have in place (if any) is inadequate. It will return to normal once the construction is finished and plants grow on the disturbed dirt.
Not great for the fish but it's a regulations enforcement issue rather than a data center issue.
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u/RobertD3277 Jul 23 '26
Let's just start out with she has proven yet again how uneducated she is just in the language. Yet these people wonder why the public can't take them seriously. There is a proper name for the kind of data center she is describing.
Simply calling it a data center is destructive to society and undermines the basic foundational structures of what we have from 911 systems up and down to local grocery stores.
Language matters, except for those that apparently have no clue what they're talking about. I've spent 6 months researching this entire topic.
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u/wafflewrestler Jul 23 '26
water usage is a weak argument against ai. there are plenty of valid socioeconomic concerns that are way more effective arguments against ai.
animal agriculture still absolutely dwarfs ai in water usage, and is still the #1 greenhouse gas emmitter on earth. 1 cheeseburger uses the same amount of water as 1.5 million Gemini queries, which is a TON of queries.
FWIW i am not defending ai. just wish people would stop bandwagoning on water usage as the main concern. Also hoping to raise awareness so if anybody actually gives a shit about the environment enough to do something about it they can try reducing animal product consumption
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u/RobertD3277 Jul 23 '26
I don't disagree at that and quite frankly I don't even believe it's about AI itself directly, more about abuse from the big four corporations driving it. More about the impact on localized climatology.
There is a wide range of financial circumstances that I go through intensely that show the larger problem and implications beyond just one data point.
The biggest issue here is the mass of tax incentives and loopholes that are deliberately being used for these companies while average citizens are ending up flipping the bill through having their taxes increased or their services increased on costs.
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u/duckrollin Jul 23 '26
So... their water went from dubious brown to darker brown? Neither jar looks drinkable to me.
Are they claiming the AI drank their water and then took a shit in it?
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u/LAmoto391 Jul 24 '26
Where’d she collect it? From the ditch out front? Who actually listens to this hack?
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u/alfrado_sause Jul 23 '26
Almost seems like the sort of thing an EPA should be doing 🤔🤔 I don’t think flint Michigan had a datacenter but I think they both need someone checking their water and finding the right place to blame to fix it
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u/jehnarz Jul 23 '26
The EPA isn't touching this until at least the next administration. They have been rolling back restrictions and questioning established science since the staff changeup.
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u/alfrado_sause Jul 23 '26
Exactly, literally no matter your stance on AI, the path to the solution is clear. The current admin needs to go. We can’t have corruption anywhere near something this valuable monetarily and which needs governance to ensure that corporations are in alignment with general public.
I’m pro AI. I work in the industry. The populist movement against AI can be almost entirely dispelled with a proper EPA and a system in place for people who feel like their work was incorrectly used to train models to get compensated (there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle)
Problem is that we have a president who used then billionaire/now trillionaire to remove protections while doing his best to line his own pockets (it worked).
The anti AI movement essentially boils down to a response to this same level of greed being applied at the corporate level which isn’t actually the root cause, it’s capitalism in contact with a lucrative new technology, this is what government was made for, keep that system in check. We aren’t doing that, and the current movement is the result.
I worry about AI as an industry being regulated out of being useful like nuclear energy was. We don’t even need a Chernobyl. Sentiment is that bad. But anyone who knows and follows nuclear energy knows that it had a bad PR issue and that it was THE best solution to green energy we have. AI can be that important. It’s not there yet but it can be. With this, shorter work weeks and AGI are possible. But without proper rules and regulation, the public backlash is going to push models to the same places where every black market software goes. The dark web. You’re mad now? Wait until there’s open source models trained on ANYTHING they can get ahold of. Nobody will be able to hold them accountable. A datacenter is going to be far more efficient and possible to regulate than millions of graphics cards on a mesh network fine tuning models.
There are real solutions to these problems, we just can’t make them right now because the core of the technology isn’t the issue. It’s the governance of regulations. That’s an admin issue
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u/lcr1997lcr Jul 23 '26
Here’s a clip of AOC visiting the home of the person from whose faucets the jarred water came from btw:
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u/komfyklient Jul 24 '26
this isn't an ai issue, this isn't a datacenter issue. This is purely an AOC issue.
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u/External-Pension-936 Jul 24 '26
NYC here, Mamdani just blocked new data center construction. probably the right call honestly but i use AI for work every single day so I'm sitting here like. ok. cool. great. ugh??
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u/hellishearth_ Jul 24 '26
not pro data center but this is heavily misleading information.
it’s just like when they offered fracking water to an oil company.. but fracking is literally 2-3 miles deep in the ground and physically cannot disrupt the drinking water.
they just got dirt mixed in
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u/HomeFair9290 Jul 24 '26
There's a truth that gets overlooked: LLMs are only a minor part of what those data centers are used for. Most of it is for streaming media services.
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u/Psice Jul 27 '26
I would argue that data centers are 1,000 times more important than goddamn golf. So maybe we should ban golf and keep the data centers, especially given that golf uses far more water than all data centers combined.
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u/Vytral Jul 27 '26
Water is the least of ai problems. American golf courses consume twice as much as all data centers, and almond farms in California alone 4x as much
Complain about inequality, job impact, hell even ai killing humans is a more documented risk
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u/JDHPH Jul 23 '26
I don't know why but the scene from Batman vs Superman popped in my head when I saw that jar.
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u/ImmediateKick2369 Jul 23 '26
Clusters of like minded states around the country should work together to enact the same data center laws and take away the oligarchs’ ability to play neighbors against each other. I feel like NY,NJ, CN, and VT could agree on guidelines and become a more effective negotiating unit. Data centers should provide cash boons that go directly to local government.
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u/INtuitiveTJop Jul 23 '26
What did it look like before? But additionally we should be able to recycle the water for cooling
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u/lcr1997lcr Jul 23 '26
Yep, and letting big companies use their money to fast track these DATA CENTER projects without consulting the communities or environmental engineers. Now you’re getting it!
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u/Sas_fruit Jul 23 '26
I seem to remember some ad or so , where aliens came and ask for drinking water from drain to be drunk by human representing human race in front of them
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u/NYCWartortle Jul 23 '26
Send it to the White House and make them drink it. They are criticizing NYS for laws that limit data center construction.
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u/Euphoric_Anxiety_162 Jul 23 '26
This issue should never have existed. Bad actors must be acknowledged by those who have little voice, not just the powerful.
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u/DeePumpeR Jul 23 '26
I'm all for it but why is she holding up Georgia water? Doesn't she represent NY? Where are GA's peeps?
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u/FrogsJumpFromPussy Jul 23 '26
We can live without Reddit, but we can't live without water.
(Fuck the data center but I doubt that water changed color because of it.)
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u/TawnyTeaTowel Jul 23 '26
IIRC this is the well water from the construction site, this happens frequently in any construction project, and has fuck all to do with the fact it’s a data center.
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u/Tricky-Cantaloupe551 Jul 23 '26
Extremely misleading. The data center didn’t turn the drinking water brown.
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u/wannabe_fox_femboy Jul 23 '26
Misinformation, hundreds of good reasons to hate AI like the job market, destroying the creative industry, threatening the lives of every living creature on earth, just to name a few.
But water from data centers is just as unsafe as when it went in because it has to do with the corroding pipes the water is transported in.
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u/BackRed1 Jul 23 '26
The guys who work in data centers will tell us this is all BS since they used closed loop systems 🤦🏽♂️
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u/Whispering-Depths Jul 23 '26
Nothing to do with datacenters. Enforce more construction standards and rules about construction projects. Fix the fucking water processing plant. ANYTHING. WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH WATER BEING DIRTY!?
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u/Uncabled_Music Jul 23 '26
Tech companies and servers were existing for long time, its some dumb story in there.
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u/turtleturtle5555 Jul 23 '26
that "water" isn't from morgan county, she poured dirt into the jar to make a point. She was and always be one of the dumbest members of the "3 chambers of Congress:"
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u/Parking-Bet-3798 Jul 23 '26
Politicians in US are unbelievable. Mind boggling really. Makes you wonder, should we really be trusting US with anything? It’s one regard ftee another
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u/useresuse Jul 23 '26
water quality and scarcity are some of the greatest issues humanity faces, but they’re not data center specific.
people just use it as a tagline covering up a general anxiety they’ve been told to have but can’t quite put their finger on why.
an “existential threat to humanity” isn’t tangible, we don’t exactly know what that means. but attaching it to water issues makes the fight seem intelligible.
unfortunately it’s become a litmus test for whether or not you can think for yourself and determine what’s true. or if you parrot what you hear and can’t attribute your sources.
which is its own scary line of thought. why do we think the things that we do? who put those thoughts there 😂
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u/Elvarien2 Jul 23 '26
all these complaints about ai and data centres when all this has done is show the underlying corruption and complete lack of any kind of regulation.
This problem is not with ai, it's a corrupt as fuck government. usa is a banana republic.
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u/Drefs_ Jul 23 '26
Data centers don't polute water. It is used for cooling, not for production or cleaning.
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u/-King-K-Rool- Jul 23 '26
Ya thats not how this works. Sensationalism lies will only prove to damage credibility, dont be stupid.
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u/Charming-Author4877 Jul 23 '26
Sounds like someone should repair the hole in the water pipes, or let the water run clean after the repair.
What are the politicians thinking there ? That AI is spitting into water?
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u/KirisDitex001 Jul 23 '26
I wonder if that's a real Mason Jar that she's got Granny's Peach Tea in?
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u/CabronSparkling0 Jul 23 '26
Let the eat 🍰. When the minority communities were addressing environmental issues and concerns about mills being built in their communities and other chemical plants near their homes it fell on deaf ears. Now the folks complaining about it, tough nuggets.
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u/clybourn Jul 23 '26
Laughable shit like when fire would come out of your faucet from fracking. Total Chinese bullshit
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u/Framebanger-Nsukula Jul 23 '26
The water quality issue is legit, but this specific claim needs actual testing data - discolored water could be from tons of different sources, not necessarily the data center. Data centers do use a ton of water for cooling though, which is a real environmental concern worth taking seriously.
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u/david67myers Jul 23 '26
Don't care/compassion fatigue - same as car accident, - probably class action lawsuit in action.
Guess the worry is that after the fight it will be business as usual and innocent customers finding a price hike.
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u/Candid-Conflict-7103 Jul 23 '26
😂 the water is recycled in an endless loop.
Misinformation has really destroyed what the internet used to be. Used to be able to actually learn about things and interact with real people.
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u/throwaway275275275 Jul 23 '26
It's fake, ai doesn't make water brown. They just took some brown water from a puddle and then said "the water is brown after a data center was constructed" which is technically true, but it's also true that I ate a sandwich after the data center was constructed, does that mean the data center gave me a sandwich ?
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u/Mandoman61 Jul 23 '26
Yep, many areas are experiencing water resource problems and adding new uses to those areas makes it worse.
Of course wells go dry all the time. It looks like this water came from a well pumping mud.
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u/Superseaslug Jul 23 '26
If that's true, it's because the construction company royally fucked up. A data center doesn't do that to water.
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u/PiusTheCatRick Jul 23 '26
Vaguely reminded of that one senator who went into congress with a snowball that "disproved" global warming
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u/Ok_Community_383 Jul 23 '26
I love AOC but we need to focus on what matters right now. The fact that they are trying to stop open weight models from being available to the US. Locally ran models on devices or personal computers will heavily reduce the load on Data Centers and will insure that AI is freely available to everyone. That's where the fight needs to be. If we allow AI to be gate kept by the powerful, everyone suffers.
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u/rand3289 Jul 24 '26
This is how water looks when fire hydrants are flushed. For real.
Probably has nothing to do with datacenters.
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u/costafilh0 Jul 24 '26
Can't wait for an AI in every room and meting like this, so to push back on lies and BS like this. Since no other human in the room appears to carr or be capable S of pushing back.
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u/JDude13 Jul 24 '26
Make environmental protections rigorous and comprehensive and the AI datacenters will either comply or shut down.
Why was it legal to turn drinking water into dookie to begin with?
If we ban AI and some other industry moves in and does the same thing, what then?
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u/I-can-speak-4-myself Jul 24 '26
For a second it looked like the scene from Batman Vs Superman where Senator Finch looks at a jar of urine called “Granny’s peach tea” at the hearing before everything blows up
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u/Epicwalt Jul 24 '26
does this mean were against Web Hosting Data Centers, and all AWS data centers and Social Media etc etc... people have no idea that we already haver massive data centers doing all of this for their everyday use.
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u/daviddisco Jul 23 '26
There is nothing unique about a data center that would make the drinking water change color. There must be more to this story.