Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question | Hacker News Reader

Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question

postandcourier.com

92 pointssushobhan85 comments

Water has an exceptionally high heat capacity, I get it. But using drinking water to cool our servers (in the interest of seeing the very best ads) seems like an exceptionally short-sighted choice for us to make.

If there is a less worthwhile thing for us to be doing with potable water, I can't think of it.

Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive.

Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline.

If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would.

If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or for watering lawns or whatever.

If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use a different way of cooling.

If you make it about Google and cooling servers (and not about the price of water) then you might win a battle but you'll still lose the war because Google is only one of many entities that will eventually deplete water resources if they are not priced properly.

  Water is a resource with a price, just like
  land or gasoline.

I don't know about South Carolina, but as I understand it in the west of America this isn't the case, as the heaviest water users are subsidised by taxpayers.

For example, in California alfalfa growers pay $70 for an acre-foot of water, while urban users in Los Angeles pay $1,000 per acre-foot. The growers use 34.1 million acre-feet a year, while urban use totals 8.9 million acre-feet a year.

Needless to say, growers get very rich from this and make big political contributions; if they had to pay market rate they'd all be out of business pretty quickly. The political contributions work; voters widely support this baffling state of affairs.

It still has a price. It just happens that the price is artificially low. That's why the comment you quoted said the price should be increased in this case.

California is a big state. Los Angeles is in a desert portion of the state. I have not researched where alfalfa is primarily grown but that is important information. You can see alfalfa test plots on this map are not in desert portions of the state. You can also see how much of the state is not a desert. http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-images/variety_map.gif

Buying in bulk is different than buying just enough to drink. A bottle of water for $5 at a movie for example.

Maybe the price of water in LA primarily covers infrastructure, not water. Their water does come from hundreds of miles away.

Nope. The water is largely coming through the same gross infrastructure. That map is not an accurate guide to regions of the state where arable water is directly available.

Water issues in the west are complicated.

Slightly different products. Water made available to a farmer, as in the farmer is allowed to pump it out of a local river, is different than clean and sanitized water delivered on demand through the tap in your downtown loft kitchen. The bottled water sold to passengers at 30,000 feet over the pacific en route to Japan is also a fundamentally different product. Water pricing is all about time and place, not necessarily volume.

> Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive.

Always?

What happens when the market price of a biological necessity exceeds what some people can bid? If business utilization of a resource yields more economic value than the continued existence of some people, is the right choice to let them die?

If business utilization of a resource yields more economic value than the continued existence of some people, is the right choice to let them die?

You mean Turing Pharmaceuticals raising the price of Daraprim to whatever the market will bear? People have issues with that, and for some reason for sixty years the price was closer to what the stuff costs to produce (i.e. USD 15 per dose, not USD 750.

I'd like to know more about the ecosystem the original owners operated in, and why the price was so low for so long.

Sounds horrid, but this is the reality of many poor countries - we literally still have people around the struggling to find enough food to eat. Many of them are from countries with ongoing conflicts/wars, which likely cost more than the the food the people need to be properly nourished.

To clarify - not saying it should be that way, quite the contrary.

> If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so that it's cheaper for Google to use a different way of cooling.

Agreed. But we always seem to fail to price-in the externalities for natural resources. Just like carbon dioxide emissions from energy production.

> Economics beats morality.

I can't tell if you're summarizing the problem or actually making a straight-faced assertion.

I read it as them saying "In practice, economics beats morality (so we'll have to change the economics of the situation if we want to fix this)".

And this is a 100% economic decision. With 1.5 million gpd, they would likely just be shotgunning groundwater through their cooling water system instead of using a closed loop system with chillers, and requisite power bill. Just another example of the tragedy of the commons.

Maybe there is a balance to be found. I think at the moment there is overwhelming interest in proper policy on environment and resources.

There are tons of restrictions like zoning, and nearly any environmental, industrial, safety, labour regulation that sit outside the economic context.

The government could change the economics with a tax on cooling down the servers with water so I believe the morality can beat pure economics.

Even in this case, the business is operating on an economic basis. The state has just adjusted the costs to demand a different economic outcome.

Also, old people have little to no economic use. We should dispose of them.

Looking at everything as a psychopathic economic agent is fun!

Please don't post like this here.

http://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We use economics to understand how resources can be exchanged for human benefit. If google had offered 100 billion dollars for this water, none of us would believe it immoral for them to make this transaction because the money could be used for good by the community.

Obviously however, 100 billion dollars is too high a price so the problem becomes not if it is immoral for google to take this water but what price is this water worth such that both google and the community come out ahead.

In the case where the money goes to "the community", then sure, maybe. But are the people selling it doing it for the interests of the community? How is the money used to benefit the community?

I am a Socialist myself, so perhaps that's why I am sceptical of the claim that 100 billion dollars would be enough to offset any kind of moral questions. Is it ethical to accept 100 billion dollars from an exploiter of labour?

That’s a pretty uncharitable reading of parent comment. When things are not correctly priced, these issues will constantly crop up. A simpler thing to do would be to price common resources correctly and rebate those who have special needs (like old people, or the poor, etc.).

> using drinking water to cool our servers seems like an exceptionally short-sighted choice for us to make.

In that case "us" is Google, in that server farm specifically. The article mentions there exists better alternatives :

> The National Security Agency cools its Fort Meade, Maryland data center with treated wastewater, touted as an environmental boon and cost savings compared to tap water or aquifer pumping.

And drawing water from an aquifer, when we don't even know how fast it's being replenished, seems like a particularly bad idea -- surprisingly so from a company whose headquarters is in California.

There isn't any lack of drinking water in the US other than maybe parts of Nevada. It's mostly used for commercial or agricultural purposes. When there is a shortage the question should be which the least important commercial or agricultural use.

Just using market based pricing would solve it. But western states have a shitty water rights policy that doesn't allow it. Someone growing water intensive crops in an arid region get priority over junior users. It's a bad system.

I mean, it's not like the water is being destroyed, or even rendered undrinkable, it's just being warmed...

Right, but

> The Google aquifer permit application states it will reuse water before eventually discharging it to the sewer system, but the company did not provide details when asked by The Post and Courier.

And 2 paragraphs down

> Groundwater can be returned to the aquifer after use, but some is lost to evaporation and the operation is costly, according to industry sources. There are other alternatives. The National Security Agency cools its Fort Meade, Maryland data center with treated wastewater, touted as an environmental boon and cost savings compared to tap water or aquifer pumping.

So basically Google is going to draw aquifer water, probably reuse it and potentially just flush the water into the the sewer system.

This is why skepticism is warranted whenever politicians and business people bemoan environmental regulations.

Alphabet management bears no cost and gives no shits about contributing to aquifer depletion in South Carolina. Of course the people running South Carolina probably don't either!

I wonder why they don't just pump the heated water back down into the aquifer. That would make it basically an open-loop geothermal heat pump.

This almost certainly has some negative environmental effects.

It's being moved. Drawing down groundwater on a massive scale can have massive and permanent environmental effects. The fact that it still exists somewhere is immaterial.

If there is a less worthwhile thing for us to be doing with potable water, I can't think of it.

China recently is cracking down on golf courses in order to preserve water. I imagine the game of golf is not actually worth the cultural heritage and entertainment it provides if you want to think about the water it uses. At least the Chinese government has concluded this and it's facing a severe potable water shortage issue in the future.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-golf-water-land-shortages...

As well... water balloons and water guns? Baths as opposed to showers? The list goes on. Google's ads provide a service the general public finds useful.

Literally shitting in it?

It is not just South Carolina. My home state of Michigan probably has more fresh water than just about any other state but it still has become a political issue and not just in Flint.

Giant Nestle is pumping tens of millions of gallons in a rural Northern Michigan county in exchange for a $200 yearly permit. Even though the promised jobs never materialized they want to pump even more water threatening the aquifer. The community and the state say no but Nestle is not backing down.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/19/ne...

That is cheap. In California, those millions of gallons cost Nestlé $524 -- a 262% increase over Michigan.

http://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/nestle-gets-away-pumping-...

The total ground water withdrawal in Michigan [mainly for agricultural use] is 98,000 Million gallons [1]. Why is Nestle extracting 100 Million a problem?

[1] -http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdard/2015_MAEAP_Water_Use...

You're comparing the usage of an entire state to the demands placed on a single aquifer.

I agree. However that is not a price issue. Further the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality site specific review said it was okay.

I am genuinely confused why people think this is an issue.

Are there any "municipal heating" systems in the U.S.?

It's popular in NL, the idea is basically hot (~70 degrees celcius) water being pumped from industrial areas (where it was used for cooling), to residential areas for cheap heating.

Yes, in New York City.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system

Wow, so that's why I've seen steam so often as an element of the NY landscape! Very cool, thank you.

There's one in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota¹, but AFAIK it only serves the downtown, i.e. large government and office buildings and hospitals.

1: http://www.districtenergy.com/

It's how amazon is heating their new buildings in Seattle:

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/09/17/amazo...

Bang! You're no longer dead! (maybe)

That's exactly what I mean though you posted it with a click-baity lead-in.

Click baity how?

And that comment is valuable because it shows that it's feasible to do with data center water, which is much less hot than the industrial sources you mentioned.

Huh, I think I read it as "It's amazing how Seattle is is heating their new buildings:".

That remark of mine was unwarranted, while I don't agree the comment makes it clear that it's special to use water from data centers, I didn't get that from it.

The University of Virginia campus has one. It's popular for students to sneak into the steam tunnels.

Why would anyone need to use potable water as a coolant, and why is potable water completely ruined and transformed into grey water by its use as a coolant?

It needs treatment so it doesn't destroy the pipes

But it doesn't continuously need new water right? If I read the article correctly, it's not just once to fill the cooling system. That's what I don't get, seems hugely expensive and wasteful.

It does to cool it, they put the heat into the ground. Nuclear plants similarly usually use ocean water. Imagine using your tap water for water cooling then it exits into the drain.

Does it really? Cannot there be a separate water system for both operations? For example, for nuclear cooling, there is one pipe network that cools the steam, and another water system that cools the pipe network that cools the steam.

Google is continually touted as the industry leader in efficient DC design, yet they do wasteful operations like this. I just don't get it.

On the other hand, Yahoo is constantly shat on (sometimes validly), yet they solved this years ago. Their Lockport, NY data center does not need air conditioning because of its design and the cool local weather. It uses 50 percent less electricity and 99 percent less water compared with traditional data centers.

We are industry-leading efficient, the water is used for evaporative cooling, very efficient. Other sites use water from an industrial canal or cold sea water.

Look here: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal... . PUE globally is 1.06, compared to Yahoo/Cap Gemini Lockports 1.08.

(Disclaimer: I work in (another) Google datacentre.)

Respectfully, please correct me if I'm wrong, but PUE doesn't take into account water usage. So driving an extremely low PUE while wasting millions of gallons of water per day to do so and then touting that as a win, feels rather disingenuous to me.

I love how you use things like seawater in Finland and non-potable water elsewhere, but don't claim this DC in SC is even remotely environmentally friendly when to save on electricity and keep your PUE low, you are using millions of gallons of drinking water per day.

I was replying to the parent on Google not being industry leading efficient and especially comparing to the Yahoo Lockport DC.

But you're right, regarding to water usage we don't publish numbers (nor does anyone else afaik, I haven't found any WUE number for e.g. Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook...) so it's difficult to compare this to others.

I am however confident that a lot of things have been considered and this was the best option, we have imho a good track record trying to do the best for the environment, a lot of attention is being paid to this internally. E.g. everything running on green electricity, which is not the cheapest.

I won't dispute you've had a good track record in the past, but past performance doesn't predict future results, as evidenced here. I understand and appreciate why you're doing it, but I can't simply accept you trying to sweep this DC under the rug. If what the original story said is true, the SC DC is an environmental albatross and you all should hang your head in shame, especially based on past wins in this area. I can not share your confidence that using millions of gallons of drinking water per day for cooling "was the best option" (unless of course you meant to add the words "to our opex" after it).

You are correct, PUE only looks at power efficiency, the metric Google uses for water is WUE.

Also, like you said, these metrics only take into account the efficiency of the DC but fail to measure their ecological footprint.

PUE will only tell you how efficient you're operating your DC (assuming everything is metered and CX'd properly), but as a metric it fails to take into consideration your larger ecological footprint.

I think the biggest question here is how can a public municipality sign an NDA written by a private corporation?

Yeah, the proper response here is:

  NO U

Especially when the entity requesting the valuable resource (water they don't yet have permission to use), is the one prompting for the NDA.

Sorry, private corporation. Take your NDA elsewhere, and go swat at your lowly job applicants with it, as they grovel for permission to waste their youth away in your flourescent dungeons and air conditioned nightmares.

Seriously, people should be protesting out front of the DNR for signing an NDA with Google over a request for public resources.

Imagine if I went to go build a house and demanded the county & city sign NDAs covering all permits and plans for my building. They'd be having none of it, esp. since I'm not a massive company like Google.

This sort of thing happens all the time. You don't hear about it because .. it's under NDA.

Cool way for a gov to hide a piece of info from disclosure to public - just make it a subject of NDA with some corp.

"The price of tap water has risen faster than gold or real estate . . ." What an odd pair of benchmarks. We don't expect the prices of either of those items to rise particularly fast. What was the actual rate of increase in the price of tap water? According to the Case-Schiller index, national housing prices have roughly doubled in the last twenty years (I don't know if the index accounts for inflation). That doesn't seem like an extraordinary rate of increase for the price of tap water.

Prima facie we don't expect them to rise fast, but they are probably the two best-known things which have risen reasonably fast (at least in the popular consciousness) in the past twenty-odd years.

How exactly is the amount of a public resource consumed by a private company a "trade secret"?

What utter nonsense. Someone in SC should file a FOIA request on principle.

http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t30c004.php

see section 30-4-40(A)1

"Trade secrets, which are defined as unpatented, secret, commercially valuable plans, appliances, formulas, or processes, which are used for the making, preparing, compounding, treating, or processing of articles or materials which are trade commodities obtained from a person and which are generally recognized as confidential and work products, in whole or in part collected or produced for sale or resale, and paid subscriber information. Trade secrets also include, for those public bodies who market services or products in competition with others, feasibility, planning, and marketing studies, marine terminal service and nontariff agreements, and evaluations and other materials which contain references to potential customers, competitive information, or evaluation."

Pardon my naivety but I am curious why in use cases like this the same water can't be reused? My car uses the same coolant over and over. While that is an apples to oranges comparison couldn't the water be allowed to naturally cool after use in a covered retention pond and then be recycled into the cooling system? Is the water from the aquifer particularly cold to begin with?

What happens to the water after it has been used to cool these servers? It's not as if it's used up, right?

Going to go ahead and recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife. And The Windup Girl is even better, but not on topic.

The concept that water is so scarce that it's even rare for drinking never gelled for me.

But I still enjoyed the book.

I don't see it as a matter of absolute scarcity. In the book, drinking water for the poor is scarce, but the upper middle class has access to fountains and gardens, etc. If you think of it as a matter of control, it makes more sense. If you're on the inside of the arcology, everything you need is provided for. If you're on the outside, you're on your own. Resources are kept artificially scarce for any number of reasons, but mostly to support the status quo.

Water is great for cooling, but who the hell dumps it afterwards?! I don't think they quite understood what "water cooling" is..

They dump it because it's not cool anymore and nobody is wanting to buy hot water from them at a cost that makes it worth their while.

If they had the capability to cool the water fast enough then they'd use a closed loop cooling system and wouldn't need to pump fresh, cool groundwater.

Well, duh. If I had to pay nothing for water, I would also just run the tap through a radiator all day and save on the AC electricity.

But then I also have a conscience and realize what a gigantic waste that is, so I don't.

This is basically how we cool our house in Montana during the summers. Cold water is pumped up one well and hot water is returned down another well. It uses much less electricity than a conventional AC system.

Wow. I've thought about this, using tap water to cool the house, but it's so wasteful it was never more than a playful thought. But then the Netherlands' summers are reasonably survivable even if they make me feel shit all day and all night.

At the end of the day, net zero water is 'used' it is all returned to the ground.

Its actually a strong net water savings: the production of electricity in Montana uses around 16 gallons of water per kilowatt hour.

Large scale water cooling systems are open return systems.

Basically they pump in cold water and pump hot water back out.

Cooling the water is expensive and ineffective on large scales.

Beyond that you have evaporative cooling which is used for large scale HVAC systems in this case the water simply evaporates away into the atmosphere.

Fine but why not pump it out onto some crops? Here I am paying to heat water for my house and pool -- I should move next door to Google and hook up to their drain pipe.

You can try some places use reclaimed hot water from industrials sources for metropolitan heating.

Yes, I don't get it either. The article implies that they reuse it for a while, and then dump. But I can imagine how filter and ion-exchange systems need water for back-flushing and other maintenance. So maybe there's some hard-to-avoid loss.

It's not being dumped, it evaporates.

Check https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/be... and https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal... .

(Disclaimer: I work in (another) Google datacentre)

Evaporative cooling, like those cooling towers next to hydrothermal power plants.

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