The infrastructure thing I get! The water thing is, I think, baloney, but depending on where you are there's energy generation concerns. Seems totally reasonable to me for local political bodies to demand that new data center projects account for what they'll do to the local power grid, and, obviously, running jet turbine gas generators is not a reasonable answer to those concerns.

What frustrates me about the new political valence of data centers is that there are reasons to be optimistic about data centers in blue states, which could move the market towards renewables and grid modernization, making data centers --- which are going to happen one way or the other --- a vector for improving our current energy system. Instead, they're all just going to be pushed to the locales who will do the least to regulate energy usage.

▲

scheme271 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn't help that at least one datacenter operator and possibly more promised municipalities in Arizona that they wouldn't use their water and then secretly used millions of gallons. This in the middle of water shortages.

▲

creato an hour ago | parent [-]

I don't know what timeframe we are talking about here, but 1 million gallons is how much 33 people in the US use in a year. It's really not that much water.

	▲	Terr_ an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> 1 million gallons is how much 33 people in the US use in a year. For a moment I was worried that this might be an average that includes indirect usage through industry and agriculture, but AFAICT no, it's in line with just residential usage, so good-on-ya for that. > I don't know what timeframe we are talking about here The utility claims it was 30m gallons over 4 months [0], and 90mgal/yr would be like ~3k individuals. This seems pretty significant given that Fayetteville is only about ~20k residents. [1] [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/georgia-data-center... [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/fayettevillecit...

▲

kleton 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The water thing

It’s amazing how Karen Hao managed to graduate from MIT without learning the difference between m^3 and L

▲

DANmode 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The water thing is, I think, baloney

It’s legal/permitted in most cases, but it’s certainly a problem, what these specific data centers are dispensing into the water table in certain places.

What exactly are you saying is baloney?

▲

namdnay 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The water sediment thing had nothing to do with the building being a data center I think? Any form of construction would interfere with people drinking well water next to it

▲

tommica 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't that enough to rethink the construction - it takes a while to build a data center, and I would not be happy that I have to suffer with shitty water because a data center is being built for years.

▲

namdnay 3 hours ago | parent [-]

What I mean is that it’s got nothing to do with data centers. Saying “data centers pollute water” is misleading, in these situations

1) we’re talking about people pulling unfiltered untreated well water

2) any building would have had exactly the same effect.

	▲	techpression an hour ago \| parent [-]
		What? How is a data center that runs insane amounts of water through it every single day the same as a warehouse with a tap and bathroom? And sure, a rocket launch pad would also cause issues, but now it’s a data center that is doing it, let’s not argue fictional realities.

▲

DANmode 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am not talking about sediment, or anything construction-related.

This is normal operations being done irresponsibly:

1.) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/08/meta-datacen...

2.) https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/saline-township-residen...

	▲	namdnay 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Did you read the guardian article? It’s a bit of a nothing-burger, are we really going to have a national panic based on that? > flushed bacteria-contaminated water into public sewers I do that every morning