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'I can't drink the water' - life next to a US data centre

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    The article isn't clear about the mechanism by which the data center is supposedly affecting the woman's well. Is the data center using well water, depleting the supply of ground water in the area? Or is the claim that the construction disturbed the geology enough to cause problems with flow and sediment in a well 366 meters away? Does anyone know or have theories?

  • The article isn't clear about the mechanism by which the data center is supposedly affecting the woman's well. Is the data center using well water, depleting the supply of ground water in the area? Or is the claim that the construction disturbed the geology enough to cause problems with flow and sediment in a well 366 meters away? Does anyone know or have theories?

    It's unclear, because the relevant official bodies insist that things are fine

  • "Our goal is that by 2030, we'll be putting more water back into the watersheds and communities where we're operating data centres, than we're taking out," says Will Hewes, global water stewardship lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS), which runs more data centres than any other company globally.

    How can this possibly make sense? Mine owner says, "by 2030 we'll be putting more gold into the ground than we're taking out!" I can only assume this is some carbon credits style of nonsense.

    I really hope what they mean is clean water.

    It can happen; there’s a paper mill by me that was actually an important part of the river cleanup process when the river was far worse than it is today. It takes water from the river, uses it for their needs, then treats it and returns it to the river far far cleaner than they took it out, which has been a net benefit for the entire downstream river ecosystem. That plan, and their follow-through, is the only reason that mill exists at all.

    Thing is, where are they going to find this not-particularly-clean water to treat and return? Are they going to need all new infrastructure built to accommodate this?

    And why is that cheaper/easier/whatever than just making a closed loop cooling system, which they could have done from the being..

  • I can’t find evidence that datacenters dump water into the ground.

    I thought I found something earlier that alluded to it, but Lemmys on my phone and doing any real research is always annoying on it. I can try to find something. I know they do release very significant amounts of wastewater though. But whether that’s all back on public utilities or how it’s but back in the ground is unclear. I’ll see I can find anything specific.

  • I can’t find evidence that datacenters dump water into the ground.

    https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/final-fonsi-ea-2251-rivian-stanton-springs-north-2024-12.pdf#page26

    Does mention it is passed to a treatment facility, some is treated on campus, and other is stored.

    So according to epa report it was not expected to affect local groundwater.

  • I really hope what they mean is clean water.

    It can happen; there’s a paper mill by me that was actually an important part of the river cleanup process when the river was far worse than it is today. It takes water from the river, uses it for their needs, then treats it and returns it to the river far far cleaner than they took it out, which has been a net benefit for the entire downstream river ecosystem. That plan, and their follow-through, is the only reason that mill exists at all.

    Thing is, where are they going to find this not-particularly-clean water to treat and return? Are they going to need all new infrastructure built to accommodate this?

    And why is that cheaper/easier/whatever than just making a closed loop cooling system, which they could have done from the being..

    Intel was lauded for this same thing in the early 2000s at the fab I worked at, since ultrapure water (literal H2O) was required to rinse the chip wafers the water going out was cleaner than going in.

    I’m still not entirely sure why these data centers require such massive amounts of water when we’ve been running heat exchange loops in nuclear plants for decades.

  • "Our goal is that by 2030, we'll be putting more water back into the watersheds and communities where we're operating data centres, than we're taking out," says Will Hewes, global water stewardship lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS), which runs more data centres than any other company globally.

    How can this possibly make sense? Mine owner says, "by 2030 we'll be putting more gold into the ground than we're taking out!" I can only assume this is some carbon credits style of nonsense.

    global water stewardship lead at Amazon

    How can this possibly make sense?

    No. Your expectation is wrong. You cannot expect him to make any sense.

    Such people do not get paid for making sense, but for creating lies. Dreamy, foggy, false images to distract you, to make you forget about asking for the truth.

  • Intel was lauded for this same thing in the early 2000s at the fab I worked at, since ultrapure water (literal H2O) was required to rinse the chip wafers the water going out was cleaner than going in.

    I’m still not entirely sure why these data centers require such massive amounts of water when we’ve been running heat exchange loops in nuclear plants for decades.

    I’m still not entirely sure why these data centers require such massive amounts of water when we’ve been running heat exchange loops in nuclear plants for decades.

    Because many are running evaporative cooling.

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    He takes us to a creek downhill from a new construction site for a data centre being built by US firm Quality Technology Services (QTS).

    George Dietz, a local volunteer, scoops up a sample of the water into a clear plastic bag. It's cloudy and brown.

    Well, maybe they didn't have proper sediment control but a creek is a lot different than well water. Most people don't drink out of creeks, sediment control is done more for the purpose of protecting fish habitat.

    Hauls buckets of water to flush her toilet

    What? You're concern is sediment in your well water and then go haul dirty brown sediment filled water from the creek to flush your toilet instead?

    Buy a sediment filter for your well water. Even people not beside giant data centres should have one just because it keeps the system functional and running better. It is practically a requirement to have one.

  • Intel was lauded for this same thing in the early 2000s at the fab I worked at, since ultrapure water (literal H2O) was required to rinse the chip wafers the water going out was cleaner than going in.

    I’m still not entirely sure why these data centers require such massive amounts of water when we’ve been running heat exchange loops in nuclear plants for decades.

    They use adiabatic coolers to minimize electrical cost for cooling and maximize cooling capacity. The water isn't directly used as the cooling fluid. It's just used to provide evaporative cooling to boost the efficiency of a conventional refrigeration system. I also suspect that many of them are starting to switch to CO2 based refrigeration systems which heavily benefit from adiabatic gas coolers due to the low critical temp of CO2. Without an adiabatic cooler the efficiency of a CO2 based system starts dropping heavily when the ambient temp gets much above 80F.

    They could acheive the same results without using water, however their refrigeration systems would need larger gas coolers which would increase their electricity usage.

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    Obviously the law must be simple enough to follow so that for Jim’s furniture shop is not a problem nor a too high cost to respect it, but it must be clear that if you break it you can cease to exist as company. I think this may be the root of our disagreement, I do not believe that there is any law making body today that is capable of an elegantly simple law. I could be too naive, but I think it is possible. We also definitely have a difference on opinion when it comes to the severity of the infraction, in my mind, while privacy is important, it should not have the same level of punishments associated with it when compared to something on the level of poisoning water ways; I think that a privacy law should hurt but be able to be learned from while in the poison case it should result in the bankruptcy of a company. The severity is directly proportional to the number of people affected. If you violate the privacy of 200 million people is the same that you poison the water of 10 people. And while with the poisoning scenario it could be better to jail the responsible people (for a very, very long time) and let the company survive to clean the water, once your privacy is violated there is no way back, a company could not fix it. The issue we find ourselves with today is that the aggregate of all privacy breaches makes it harmful to the people, but with a sizeable enough fine, I find it hard to believe that there would be major or lasting damage. So how much money your privacy it's worth ? 6 For this reason I don’t think it is wise to write laws that will bankrupt a company off of one infraction which was not directly or indirectly harmful to the physical well being of the people: and I am using indirectly a little bit more strict than I would like to since as I said before, the aggregate of all the information is harmful. The point is that the goal is not to bankrupt companies but to have them behave right. The penalty associated to every law IS the tool that make you respect the law. And it must be so high that you don't want to break the law. I would have to look into the laws in question, but on a surface level I think that any company should be subjected to the same baseline privacy laws, so if there isn’t anything screwy within the law that apple, Google, and Facebook are ignoring, I think it should apply to them. Trust me on this one, direct experience payment processors have a lot more rules to follow to be able to work. I do not want jail time for the CEO by default but he need to know that he will pay personally if the company break the law, it is the only way to make him run the company being sure that it follow the laws. For some reason I don’t have my usual cynicism when it comes to this issue. I think that the magnitude of loses that vested interests have in these companies would make it so that companies would police themselves for fear of losing profits. That being said I wouldn’t be opposed to some form of personal accountability on corporate leadership, but I fear that they will just end up finding a way to create a scapegoat everytime. It is not cynicism. I simply think that a huge fine to a single person (the CEO for example) is useless since it too easy to avoid and if it really huge realistically it would be never paid anyway so nothing usefull since the net worth of this kind of people is only on the paper. So if you slap a 100 billion file to Musk he will never pay because he has not the money to pay even if technically he is worth way more than that. Jail time instead is something that even Musk can experience. In general I like laws that are as objective as possible, I think that a privacy law should be written so that it is very objectively overbearing, but that has a smaller fine associated with it. This way the law is very clear on right and wrong, while also giving the businesses time and incentive to change their practices without having to sink large amount of expenses into lawyers to review every minute detail, which is the logical conclusion of the one infraction bankrupt system that you seem to be supporting. Then you write a law that explicitally state what you can do and what is not allowed is forbidden by default.
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    I wish everyone could read your comment right now. Spot on