AI threatens to raid the water reserves of Europe's driest regions

I don't think this argument works at all, because bigger datacenter operator does NOT mean "tolerates higher OPEX".

> How is a city [...] supposed to pay more for water than a multi-billion dollar company?

I do not understand this; the city would not compete with the datacenter operator for water-- the farmers would, and both of those would be paying the municipality for the water (ideally), not vice-versa. Residential users already pay much more for water (typically, compared to farming/industry) so any renegotiation is unlikely to affect them much.

But people don't realize that residential water use is usually a tiny fraction of the total available supply.

Just price the rest of the non-residential supply at market prices.

No, I'm not ignoring that. I'm saying two things:

1) When put next to existing water usage, data center water usage stops looking as crazy large as is implied in TFA. All data centers for all compute purposes in the EU used as much water in 2024 as the creation of a single food product used in 2019. That's important perspective to have when we're talking about additive water usage, because it hints out what percentage increase we're talking about [0].

2) I don't accept the presumption that existing usage has preeminence now and forever by simple virtue of being older. We should be able to look at all water usage that currently stands and decide which usages are worth keeping and which are worth adding.

You're welcome to disagree that data centers (AI and otherwise, because non-AI workloads are included in the numbers) are worth more than chocolate, but it should be as part of a fair comparison between them on the merits, with no grandfathering chocolate and agriculture in just because the chocolate companies and farmers got there before anyone was paying attention to monitoring water usage.

[0] If you can find a percentage increase from data centers figure that would be even better, but I can't find absolute numbers for total water usage in the EU to construct such a figure.

I still don't understand why more attention is not being paid to oil immersion cooling! https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10101126

It's corporate greed and an unwillingness to face the external consequences of demand for compute. Just because misting is cheaper doesn't make it automatically better.

For these new planned data centers, realistically, what would the "one-time" volume be VS how much they would need per hour/day? And not some straw-man argument like what the guy in the video said.

But Zaragoza is quite touristic, although probably mostly domestic tourism.

It wants to keep industrial water use away without even having a discussion about water allocation/price. This is because farmers (all around the world tbh) are getting an insanely good deal right now (on water), and any public discussion of water price is only ever gonna make things worse for them.

No, that's precisely the situation where markets work best: when resources are scarce. A single gallon of water isn't worth much to a data center or a farmer; you can't water a field with just one gallon. But it's potentially worth a lot to someone who's thirsty. Prices will go up, demand will drop, and supply will increase to meet demand, unless you kneecap that process by imposing artificial price controls - then you'll have shortages.

> you can have people who need it but are too poor to pay what others will pay for it

You're right, markets are not charities; they're only concerned with efficiency. Caring for people who can't take care of themselves isn't efficient, but it is the right thing to do. Even in this situation though you're better off with markets than without them, because it's way easier for people, organizations, and governments with excess resources to provide for the needy when they're operating in an efficient environment than in an inefficient one.

> If someone [...] buys all the water

That's called a monopoly and I agree that's not good, because if one person owns/controls everything it's no longer a free market; you're essentially back to central planning. Individuals and data centers should be able to buy their water in a competitive market, not one dominated by a single supplier.

> It also doesn't work when the product is common use, like a road or a park

Markets are actually great at allocating things like road space. NYC's congestion pricing is doing wonders for the efficiency of their road system right now, and tolls have been a thing basically forever. But I agree in principle it's hard for markets to allocate resources that there's no practical mechanism of charging for. Thankfully, water generally doesn't fall into that category.

Every person should have the right to clean easily accessible drinking water in their homes. We know how to do that, it just costs money but it should be a basic responsibility of every government.

Beyond that if you want to use water for whatever then you should have to compete for it in a market. Maybe the only other exception might be growing sustenance food. But those systems (as they are currently implemented across the world) quickly get political- but no one should starve because water is too expensive either.

The thing is that almost all of the time that's not what's at stake when talking about things like data centers- it's a strawman.

Tech is not immune from abuses of power, but most water scarcity that causes suffering (people being literally thirsty or can't wash their clothes) is not a resource issue (amount of water available)- it's a political/infrastructure issue. Don't build a data center that takes away people's clean drinking water. Build water infrastructure where people live.

But of course that's not the problem described by the article, even though the writer would like to lightly imply that might be the case.

Edit to add: Water and water rights in the western USA is a political issue that politicians would have you believe is not up to them. It's a scam and an advertising campaign that has people buying low flush toilets when a lot of the water is wasted by big Ag companies.