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Comment by myrmidon | Hacker News Reader

Be very careful about considering this a "grassroots campaign" against "evil foreign megacorps".

This is lobbying effort directed at policy makers and the public.

As others have pointed out: There is an very simple solution to "solve" water waste/allocation: Just put a price on it.

BUT one big interest group, namely agriculture/farmers, absolutely don't want that, because they historically could pretty much use water for free (and/or underpaid massively)-- any rational discussion about water use/price/allocation is undesirable to them, because it is likely to make the situation worse for them comparatively.

This is also why the whole discussion centers round emotional arguments against allowing industrial water use at all, instead of arguing that small/local farmers should get a better price on it.

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> agriculture/farmers, absolutely don't want that,

consumers don't want that either because it would increase food prices pretty much across the board, which would impact us much more than the cost of LLM use

Putting a price on it does not solve it because the entities that compete for the water with the data centers are out-matched financially. How is a city that has a budget that is constantly dealing with budget cuts supposed to pay more for water than a multi-billion dollar company? Taxing it does not solve it either, because there are so many incentives to writing loopholes into the tax code.

They don't even have to use water - there are alternatives. The solve is changing behavior of the leaders in this greedy industry.

> Putting a price on it does not solve it because the entities that compete for the water with the data centers are out-matched financially.

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.

Cities in my area have to buy their water. The sources of water are limited and finite. Data centers also buy it from the same sources.

I'm lost. How is a bigger business unable to tolerate higher opex in a space that is famous for economies of scale?

Residential water prices should probably be regulated and fixed (or near-fixed).

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.

Yep. And at the same time, it's the residents that are asked to conserve. Meanwhile, we let data centers off the hook when it comes to conservation?

When I drive around my town, I can't drive more than a few blocks without seeing a sign about Stage 3 water restrictions. For residents. Just doesn't seem fair.

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