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I found a lot of value in this article. Out of frustration with people who are alarmist over how much water a datacenter "consumes" compared to households, I've

I found a lot of value in this article. Out of frustration with people who are alarmist over how much water a datacenter "consumes" compared to households, I've probably erred too often towards: 'People sometimes invoke the idea that water moves through a cycle and never really gets destroyed, in order to suggest that we don’t need to be concerned at all about water use. But while water may not get destroyed, it can get “used up” in the sense that it becomes infeasible or uneconomic to access it.' Side note, this personal anecdote from the author caught me off guard: "my monthly water bill is roughly 5% of the cost of my monthly electricity bill". I'm in the American southwest (but not arid desert like parts of Arizona/Nevada/Utah), and my monthly water cost averages out annually to ~60% of the cost of electricity. Makes me wonder if my water prices are high, if my electricity prices are low, if my water usage is high or my electricity usage is low.

password4321 1y ago
I would like to know how much water is taken by a datacenter vs. the same size space of apartments. I can see why it could be considered a bad choice for communities long term if a datacenter takes more.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  Some quick napkin math using averages (data center designs vary). One of Google's larger and thirstier data centers, in Oklahoma, is said to use 833 million gallons per year (that's about 2500 acre-feet, in useful terms). It occupies about 250 acres, most of which looks to be parking lots but whatever. The number of households that can be supported on 1 acre-foot per year ranges from 2 to 6 depending (Las Vegas on one end, San Francisco on the other). You said apartments specifically and this urban form usually starts at 50 dwellings per acre, minimum, which would lead me to say the apartments use more water. The break-even point in this equation is 2-5 households per acre.
- NegativeLatency 1y ago
  Apples and oranges, you can compare the water usage, but places for people to live aren't in the same category as datacenters.
  - orthoxerox 1y ago
    Yes they are. Both can be built in areas with abundant water supply.
- azemetre 1y ago
  The government in The Dalles, Oregon were suing local newspapers that were questioning Google's water usage in the city: https://www.rcfp.org/dalles-google-oregonian-settlement/ https://www.rcfp.org/dalles-google-oregonian-settlement/ Apparently Google uses nearly 30% of the city's water supply: https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-water-use-is-soaring-in-the-dalles-records-show-with-two-more-data-centers-to-come.html https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-wa... I highly doubt any apartment block comes close to taking 30% of a city's water supply.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    I’ve driven through The Dalles. It’s a very small town. A search shows a population of 15,000 and declining annually. It’s also right on a big river. The article you linked said that Google was spending nearly $30 million to improve the city’s water infrastructure so there are no problems. Talking about this in terms of percentages of a small town’s water supply while ignoring the fact that the city is literally on a giant river and Google is paying for the water infrastructure is misleading.
    - grafmax 1y ago
      2/3rds of new data centers are built in areas of existing water scarcity.
    - watwut 1y ago
      The question was water spendinf per square meters compared to household. That question was answered and does not depend on proximity to river.
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    That's because it's a large industry and nobody lives there. This pattern appears all over the place. The paper mills in the pacific northwest consume large multiples of the water used by their little towns.
    - azemetre 1y ago
adrr 1y ago
Biggest alarmist is movement against Nestle using water for bottled water in California. They don’t even use as much as an average golf course. How much water is wasted on golf courses in these arid regions? Or growing water intensive crops like alfalfa that isn’t even directly used to feed people.
- sellmesoap 1y ago
  There are a lot of historical reasons for people to be angry at Nestle, aside from their impact on water.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    It's become a meme, or a badge to display your tribal affiliation, to be mad at Nestle. Monsanto is another example of this phenomenon.
    - sellmesoap 1y ago
      Do you think that leading mothers away from natural breast feeding into buying nestle formula is good for babies? Terminator crops that won't propagate from seed also have the same SaaS feel, making two natural solutions for human sustinanace up for rent, directing science research away from negative conclusions about both these scenarios, creating dependency on both these industries sounds like a win for money but not human wellbeing. Sign me up for the tribe that says no to that! Edit: adding a reference for nestle on the topic. https://voxdev.org/topic/health/deadly-toll-marketing-infant-formula-low-and-middle-income-countries https://voxdev.org/topic/health/deadly-toll-marketing-infant...
      - pfdietz 1y ago
        Great examples of the sort of nonsense I was talking about. Formula is fine. How do I know that? If it weren't, if there were any evidence it was bad, the FDA would not allow it to be sold in the US. But there's a wide variety of such formulas here. Perhaps you think formula is fine for we smart first worlders, but poor dumb third world mothers have to have their agency removed and us determine what they can choose? Strong pass on that; this is no longer the age of European colonialism. Terminator crops... oh boy. This one is hilariously ridiculous. Their sin is that they don't allow the farmer to retain seeds and plant them again. You know what else has that property? All hybrid seeds! These have been around for nearly a century. No hybrids breed true if you try to replant them; the uniform combinations of genes in the first generation hybrid becomes randomized in the second generation. You aren't complaining about terminator seeds, you are complaining about modern agriculture.
maxerickson 1y ago
With no AC and gas hot water, my monthly water bill is ~150% of my electric (that water cost is not including the wastewater that is billed on the water metering). My water usage is pretty average and my electric usage is apparently hilariously low.
hammock 1y ago
>I'm in the American southwest (but not arid desert like parts of Arizona/Nevada/Utah) Doesn’t matter whether you are in the desert or not, only matters if you are in a shared watershed with them. There is huge agricultural demand for water and water rights in those areas which translates to high prices for the areas where they can source water (like your presumably more-watered location)
abullinan 1y ago
I live in the northwest US. My water bill is 110%-120% of my electric bill.
testing22321 1y ago
It staggers me you’ve never wondered these things before. You’re paying money and using resources and you’ve never looked into the details? Living in Australia where both are expensive and very finite it’s a must.
- hinkley 1y ago
  We have the fourth largest river basin in the world. And four mountain ranges.
- newfocogi 1y ago
  I track my water usage and electricity usage every month. I'm confused why the cost ratio is off by an order of magnitude from the author. The base monthly charge of my water bill ignoring any usage is more then 10% of my largest electricity bill (so maybe that's the answer right there).
gdubs 1y ago
I think the water-usage stuff regarding data centers is really lacking context in online discourse – and yet, I still believe that freshwater usage really needs to be more of a concern for people, generally. I'm not 'anti-AI' but, I cringe a bit every time someone dismissively says "water cycle" to dismiss concerns around freshwater because, some aquifers are not going to recharge in a meaningful timeframe. That water isn't 'destroyed' – but if a town is tight on water already, it's not necessarily coming back, practically speaking.
LeifCarrotson 1y ago
Here in Michigan, my water price is also about 5% of my electric bill. Which is also small, we barely used the AC this summer. Water billing here is (frustratingly) not progressive: the first thousand gallons costs the same as the tenth or hundredth thousand gallons. It's cheap, we're surrounded by fresh water on the surface and you can stick a well down through 80-100 feet of glacial sand and gravel and get drinkable water basically anywhere. I was surprised to learn that 70% of my township's municipal water is used by only 15% of the households: basically, those that irrigate their lawns daily.
- ralusek 1y ago
  Why should it be progressive if it's not even scarce there? Why are you trying to punish people unnecessarily?
pluto_modadic 1y ago
a datacenter getting "priority" over potable water to feed the data farms instead of, say, requiring "humans first, datacenter if there's any left"

password4321 1y ago

I would like to know how much water is taken by a datacenter vs. the same size space of apartments. I can see why it could be considered a bad choice for communities long term if a datacenter takes more.

jeffbee 1y ago
Some quick napkin math using averages (data center designs vary). One of Google's larger and thirstier data centers, in Oklahoma, is said to use 833 million gallons per year (that's about 2500 acre-feet, in useful terms). It occupies about 250 acres, most of which looks to be parking lots but whatever. The number of households that can be supported on 1 acre-foot per year ranges from 2 to 6 depending (Las Vegas on one end, San Francisco on the other). You said apartments specifically and this urban form usually starts at 50 dwellings per acre, minimum, which would lead me to say the apartments use more water. The break-even point in this equation is 2-5 households per acre.
NegativeLatency 1y ago
Apples and oranges, you can compare the water usage, but places for people to live aren't in the same category as datacenters.
- orthoxerox 1y ago
  Yes they are. Both can be built in areas with abundant water supply.
azemetre 1y ago
The government in The Dalles, Oregon were suing local newspapers that were questioning Google's water usage in the city: https://www.rcfp.org/dalles-google-oregonian-settlement/ https://www.rcfp.org/dalles-google-oregonian-settlement/ Apparently Google uses nearly 30% of the city's water supply: https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-water-use-is-soaring-in-the-dalles-records-show-with-two-more-data-centers-to-come.html https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-wa... I highly doubt any apartment block comes close to taking 30% of a city's water supply.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  I’ve driven through The Dalles. It’s a very small town. A search shows a population of 15,000 and declining annually. It’s also right on a big river. The article you linked said that Google was spending nearly $30 million to improve the city’s water infrastructure so there are no problems. Talking about this in terms of percentages of a small town’s water supply while ignoring the fact that the city is literally on a giant river and Google is paying for the water infrastructure is misleading.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    2/3rds of new data centers are built in areas of existing water scarcity.
  - watwut 1y ago
    The question was water spendinf per square meters compared to household. That question was answered and does not depend on proximity to river.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  That's because it's a large industry and nobody lives there. This pattern appears all over the place. The paper mills in the pacific northwest consume large multiples of the water used by their little towns.
  - azemetre 1y ago

adrr 1y ago

Biggest alarmist is movement against Nestle using water for bottled water in California. They don’t even use as much as an average golf course. How much water is wasted on golf courses in these arid regions? Or growing water intensive crops like alfalfa that isn’t even directly used to feed people.

sellmesoap 1y ago
There are a lot of historical reasons for people to be angry at Nestle, aside from their impact on water.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  It's become a meme, or a badge to display your tribal affiliation, to be mad at Nestle. Monsanto is another example of this phenomenon.
  - sellmesoap 1y ago
    Do you think that leading mothers away from natural breast feeding into buying nestle formula is good for babies? Terminator crops that won't propagate from seed also have the same SaaS feel, making two natural solutions for human sustinanace up for rent, directing science research away from negative conclusions about both these scenarios, creating dependency on both these industries sounds like a win for money but not human wellbeing. Sign me up for the tribe that says no to that! Edit: adding a reference for nestle on the topic. https://voxdev.org/topic/health/deadly-toll-marketing-infant-formula-low-and-middle-income-countries https://voxdev.org/topic/health/deadly-toll-marketing-infant...
    - pfdietz 1y ago
      Great examples of the sort of nonsense I was talking about. Formula is fine. How do I know that? If it weren't, if there were any evidence it was bad, the FDA would not allow it to be sold in the US. But there's a wide variety of such formulas here. Perhaps you think formula is fine for we smart first worlders, but poor dumb third world mothers have to have their agency removed and us determine what they can choose? Strong pass on that; this is no longer the age of European colonialism. Terminator crops... oh boy. This one is hilariously ridiculous. Their sin is that they don't allow the farmer to retain seeds and plant them again. You know what else has that property? All hybrid seeds! These have been around for nearly a century. No hybrids breed true if you try to replant them; the uniform combinations of genes in the first generation hybrid becomes randomized in the second generation. You aren't complaining about terminator seeds, you are complaining about modern agriculture.

maxerickson 1y ago

With no AC and gas hot water, my monthly water bill is ~150% of my electric (that water cost is not including the wastewater that is billed on the water metering). My water usage is pretty average and my electric usage is apparently hilariously low.

hammock 1y ago

>I'm in the American southwest (but not arid desert like parts of Arizona/Nevada/Utah) Doesn’t matter whether you are in the desert or not, only matters if you are in a shared watershed with them. There is huge agricultural demand for water and water rights in those areas which translates to high prices for the areas where they can source water (like your presumably more-watered location)

abullinan 1y ago

I live in the northwest US. My water bill is 110%-120% of my electric bill.

testing22321 1y ago

It staggers me you’ve never wondered these things before. You’re paying money and using resources and you’ve never looked into the details? Living in Australia where both are expensive and very finite it’s a must.

hinkley 1y ago
We have the fourth largest river basin in the world. And four mountain ranges.
newfocogi 1y ago
I track my water usage and electricity usage every month. I'm confused why the cost ratio is off by an order of magnitude from the author. The base monthly charge of my water bill ignoring any usage is more then 10% of my largest electricity bill (so maybe that's the answer right there).

gdubs 1y ago

I think the water-usage stuff regarding data centers is really lacking context in online discourse – and yet, I still believe that freshwater usage really needs to be more of a concern for people, generally. I'm not 'anti-AI' but, I cringe a bit every time someone dismissively says "water cycle" to dismiss concerns around freshwater because, some aquifers are not going to recharge in a meaningful timeframe. That water isn't 'destroyed' – but if a town is tight on water already, it's not necessarily coming back, practically speaking.

LeifCarrotson 1y ago

Here in Michigan, my water price is also about 5% of my electric bill. Which is also small, we barely used the AC this summer. Water billing here is (frustratingly) not progressive: the first thousand gallons costs the same as the tenth or hundredth thousand gallons. It's cheap, we're surrounded by fresh water on the surface and you can stick a well down through 80-100 feet of glacial sand and gravel and get drinkable water basically anywhere. I was surprised to learn that 70% of my township's municipal water is used by only 15% of the households: basically, those that irrigate their lawns daily.

ralusek 1y ago
Why should it be progressive if it's not even scarce there? Why are you trying to punish people unnecessarily?

pluto_modadic 1y ago

a datacenter getting "priority" over potable water to feed the data farms instead of, say, requiring "humans first, datacenter if there's any left"