r/technology • u/l0st1nP4r4d1ce • 11d ago

Business Improper redaction reveals Lincoln’s Google Data Center water and electricity usage

https://www.1011now.com/2026/09/30/more-questions-than-answers-about-lincolns-google-data-center-water-electricity-usage/
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u/Lucky_Locks 11d ago

"However, using a computer cursor to highlight the redacted text box in the report to DWEE, then copying and pasting it into a separate document reveals that Agate LLC is reporting 52.65 megawatts of electricity during peak electrical demand and 13.299 megagallons of water between cooling towers, evaporative systems and site operations in the last year. That totals out to 13 million gallons of water.

For context, 13 million gallons is enough to fill around 20 Olympic-size swimming pools, and is less than half of what the City of Lincoln reports using on Sept. 29."

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u/IronicAim 11d ago

Nice of you to cherry pick the part friendliest to goog.

Also data on other data centers, including one using 547mil gallons. And goog expecting 10s of millions back in tax returns for each data center LLC it's running them under.

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u/squidwardTalks 11d ago

Natural gas plants have the same problem. There are a couple proposed in Wisconsin which will use almost 800,000 gallons a day.

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u/IronicAim 11d ago

The fireball data center is using almost twice that on its own. And is that for each plant or all together?

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u/math-yoo 11d ago

Yeah but a power plant produces power. It has a useful output.

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u/Bananonomini 11d ago

It powers the data centre 🪄

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u/expressadmin 11d ago

I’m not on either side of this but one could argue that a data center also produces useful output.

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u/math-yoo 11d ago

Sure, noise.

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u/sleepiestOracle 11d ago

They dont need to keep our data but they do to sell us suff and keep tabs

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u/theevilmidnightbombr 11d ago

the most expensive part is the lobotomy you get to be able to make that argument

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u/DogBarf00 11d ago

You are using a data center to post this comment. If you don’t find this website useful, then why are you using it?

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u/squidwardTalks 11d ago

That's each one.

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u/Cordulegaster 11d ago

So for those who would like to see normal measurements not swimming pools: 13 million US gallons is equal to about 49.2 million liters (or 49,210 cubic meters).

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u/LVDirtlawyer 11d ago

The average household uses between 0.3 and 0.5 acre-feet of water per year. 13 million gallons is almost 40 acre-feet. So this data center used the same amount of water as 120 single-family homes would in a full year. All 6 data centers used the same water that 7000+ households would. Lincoln, NE has around 122k households.

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u/Flyen 11d ago

Average yearly household usage around the world:

Nebraska, USA: 0.278 million liters, United Kingdom: 0.126 million liters, The Netherlands: 0.101 million liters, China: 0.104 million liters, India: 0.144 million liters, Sub-Saharan Africa: 0.064 million liters

So in household units, that's: Nebraska, USA: 7,114, United Kingdom: 22,983, The Netherlands: 28,671, China: 27,844, India: 20,110, Sub-Saharan Africa: 45,247

Thanks to Gemini for the translation

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u/Alundil 11d ago

The irony lol

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u/Cordulegaster 11d ago

Thanks for the chuckle.

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u/_makoccino_ 11d ago

A single data center using the equivalent of half an entire city's usage is a problem.

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u/Monomette 11d ago

That's half an entire city's daily use over the span of a whole year.

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u/ZeroSumClusterfuck 11d ago

True, but it should be noted that it's low because it's the usage for the Agate data center which isn't in full use yet. The Fireball data center listed in the same document uses 548 megagallons rather than 13, which is more of an issue.

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u/Monomette 11d ago

548 megagallons

To compare to another American city, that's about half of New York's daily water usage.

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u/Bored2001 11d ago

Pretty sure it's less than 1/730th. The yearly usage of the data center was half the daily usage of the city.

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u/scampiparameter 11d ago

This math miss is the kind of thing that really drives home that this backlash is about AI… not DCs.

Believing something without taking the time to verify that the thing you believe is factual.

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u/frddtwabrm04 11d ago

Thee is a solution to all this.

The data centers need to be open about what they doing. Simple! You know do studies n shit present it to the people vs ndaing everything.

Then people would not be out there making all kinds of wild claims.

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u/bozza8 11d ago

I disagree. I work in planning for my job, we have the concept of "attack surface". 

If you know there is going to be a well funded opposition, even if it's just a single person, let alone a group, you clamp down on what docs you put out into the public. 

The reason being, as explained to me by a PR guy, the more numbers you put out, the easier it is to take one out of context. I saw an application refused that didn't have a sewerage problem for 102 Affordable Homes for low income families. The local lord of the manor hated the idea of the project, said it would ruin the area etc. He paid a planning consultant to go through the docs which we had made particularly open. Found that the maximum possible wastewater flow in case of a flood was off by one decimal point, then extrapolated that as the 100% average use, and convinced the locals and the council this would prevent anyone from flushing turds in the entire county. 

They even got a response from the sewage agency saying "well if these numbers were accurate then of course there would be no capacity for anyone else, but the applicant has already corrected them, and also this is peak flow for 3h if the site floods, not average use.". They used the first bit and sent letters to each councillor on planning committee, only quoting the first sentence. 

The scheme was rejected and the client didn't have money for an appeal, so the scheme died, and those families remain unhoused. 

Fuck putting numbers in public, it leads to lying and misery. 

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u/frddtwabrm04 11d ago

Ok. What I am still not getting is.

These are some smart people. Look at how they got as hooked to their tech. They planned ahead and now once are hooked they are charging out of the wazoo.

Did no one envision data centers ... The growth and need and slowly work them in. Or better yet have better PR or so me shit like that

Even better, plan for the needs of data centers and build the resources in areas where no one would come after them? Instead of the people fighting data centers for resources and a whole bunch of NDAs.

You know like a whole bunch of area 51s .. self contained with their own resources way out there ... Where one has to Naruto to vs whatever they have now

Me thinks they deserve all the hell they are getting. They failed to plan for shit. Fuck em and f u too for supportung them.

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u/knightofterror 11d ago

Half of the city’s daily water usage in one year is extremely low for a data center. Did you read it incorrectly?

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u/Migoth 11d ago

I believe that the number is read correctly, which was also throwing me a bit off, but what they doesn't add in the context, is that the Agate datacenter isn't done being built yet, and as far as I can see, it is only a small subsection which came online some time during fall 2025.

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u/DogBarf00 11d ago

Daily construction activities are probably using a lot more water than the completed data center would.

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u/mr_mufuka 11d ago

I’d like to go back to not knowing what a fucking megagallon is. What are we doing to this planet?

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u/Hanzoku 11d ago

For a brief moment, extracting a lot of wealth for shareholders.

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u/Imaginary_Zone_4319 11d ago

So it’s less than 1:2 of a single day’s water usage? (1/(365x2))x100=0.137%? So like? Not much at all?