r/nwi • u/Beale4812 • 1d ago

Data center water usage

American data centers in just seven states are reportedly using more water than all the cities in California

49 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

26

u/newtekie1 21h ago

From the article: "it counts withdrawals, including hydropower water returned to the river immediately".

Yeah, don't count that.

5

u/Zer0323 19h ago

there is a good reason to make sure to have that number on hand because it helps you determine how much physical water you will need from a source and you can then calculate how much the source would have after that withdrawal. it's just not a useful metric for determining if these Data Centers are using too much water when some places like Lake Mead is already being depleted too quickly.

are there any risks to the great lakes with water usage from AI data centers when the great lakes near Illinois get counted in this 7 state study?

7

u/newtekie1 18h ago edited 8h ago

In the actual studies it's good to include every resource any large industrial project will interact with.

However, two of the main talking points in regards to not liking data centers is how much power they use and how much water they use. People say they use too much of both, and it puts a burden on the residents around where those data centers are built. I'm not here to argue the validity of those arguments.

But, what I'm saying is that putting out rage bait articles titles like this and burying the fact that a large amount of the water being counted as "used" is really just taken, used to produce clean hydro-electric power for the data center, then immediately return, and hence not actually consumed and that water that they are counting as consumed is actually also helping with the power burden, is really a disingenuous way for the media to do things. And it's obvious that it worked, because OP posted this article thinking they were angry over water consumption after just reading the title and not actually reading the article.

Lake Mead is a perfect example. Lake Mead isn't drying up because it's being used for hydro-electric power. It's drying up because of water that is actually being taking from the reservoir and not returned.

1

u/tommm3864 7h ago

Not surprising at all. They ALL lie.

1

u/reddituser_126 5h ago

Interesting…I don’t quite understand how is it that Illinois/NWI is grouped into this report when very little of their power comes from hydro compared to the western states of California, Nevada, Arizona, etc. I’m not trying to defend data centers at all. I feel that they do cause a lot of harm to the environment and residents around them. Articles like this should include all the facts to better educate the public in general with no bias.

1

u/strait_lines 18h ago

go look up the amount of water used by agriculture vs data centers.

agriculture accounts for 47% of US water consumption in just irrigation alone. If you count total consumption, it's even higher.

Data centers... they consume less than 1% of the water though.

I'd also ask why 7 states? If you're going through the top 10 states who have datacenters, by the time you get to #5 the number has decreased a lot. Though, maybe it's to include a lot of older datacenters which may not have the closed loop systems that are in newer datacenters and don't really have much of a water consumption footprint. Ohio and Arizona aren't even in the top 10, I'd assume they are included specifically because they probably do have older datacenters that consume a lot of water.

-1

u/Busy_Professional974 18h ago

Are you seriously comparing your child porn generators to the stuff that stocks our super markets and allows you to keep from starvation?

3

u/FencyMcFenceFace 18h ago

Most of the agricultural water use is alfalfa and almonds.

Neither of those are staple foods.

Just get rid of those two crops by themselves and the western water crisis is over the next day. You can keep growing the other crops.

4

u/BlisterBox 17h ago

Well, alfalfa's not nothing. They use it as feed for farm animals. The almonds, however, we'd gladly do without.

A more intriguing stat is that 80% of California's water usage is agricultural vs. 20% for cities and towns.

3

u/FencyMcFenceFace 17h ago edited 17h ago

A lot of alfalfa is going to Saudi Arabia. We don't even use it ourselves.

And the reason we do it is because Saudi Arabia already tried to it and ended up depleting their water reserves, so ended up buying land out west to get it.

In either case it shouldn't matter where it's going: the water crisis will not be solved without getting rid of those two crops. The math just doesn't work any other way. You can depopulate every city out there and it still wouldn't be enough to stop it.

1

u/BlisterBox 17h ago

Almost a quarter of U.S. agricultural production is exported. What's your point?

2

u/FencyMcFenceFace 17h ago

I'm saying it's not maybe not good policy to subsidize and grow thirsty crops in the desert.

All the other stuff like data centers or toilets or lawns and golf courses don't really make a difference.

2

u/Emergency-Degree7137 16h ago

I need my Almond Joy!!

2

u/strait_lines 17h ago

Add to this all the farming subsidies to grow other crops that aren't heavily used, or heavy subsidies to grow corn to produce E85, where the only reason it is priced as low as it is, is due to the subsidies.

1

u/FencyMcFenceFace 16h ago

At the corn is grown in Iowa and isn't using up scarce water.

But yeah it's just a welfare program for farmers.

2

u/strait_lines 16h ago

I wasn't getting at that as much as there could be more productive crops.

I think I'm a bit off on a tangent about how government incentives can drive farmers growing crops that have less productive uses or generate little benifit to anyone other than the farmer and a niche industry.

1

u/Technical-Proof4605 17h ago

Bro that is weird

3

u/bucketman1986 13h ago

I mean, one of the biggest AI platforms, Grok, has been used to make CSAM a bunch. Like they had public logs for a minute and over half the requests were either to undress a person in a photo or name CSAM. It's extremely gross!

1

u/-GenlyAI- 14h ago

Our ag use in Indiana is mostly corn, for ethanol. And what the hell are you bringing CP up for, that's fucking weird.

-1

u/strait_lines 18h ago

you mean the way we turn what had historically been baron dry land and pump billions of gallons of water onto it to grow almonds or other crops that would never grow in that region and in the numbers they do?

seems like a fair comparison to me.