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Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

Water is a critical resource in dwindling supplies in many water-stressed regions. These data centers have been known to suck up water supplies during active droughts. Is there anyone left at the EPA that gets a say in how we manage water for projects like this?

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We deplete our midwestern aquifers to make ethanol which we burn, and we grow almonds in California.

Both of those have significantly more water impact. Both of those are significantly less useful.

Why not focus on issues that matter.

Why either/or? This is largely a tech forum so almond crops don't need to be the big area of focus or where we as a community can offer our best knowledge/coordination.

Food and fuel are significantly more useful than chatbots.

Water is much less of an issue than the media makes it out to be. It's a problem in some specific areas, yes, but power is a much better concern.

And even where water scarcity is a problem, heat exchangers can be configured to use wastewater. The Palo Verde plant does this.

Correct. There are a variety of solutions. Each DC is somewhat unique, but in general water isn't a huge concern. Cities make a big deal about it b/c they want the hyper scalers to give concessions such as processing gray water for the local muni.

Where is this water meme coming from? Surely the water is just pumped around, not actually used up?

Evaporative cooling effectively "uses up" the water. It's possible to run chillers instead, but that consumes more electricity, and some power plants also use evaporative cooling.

Some water usage has highly questionable counting methodologies.

Like using if a datacenter is using hydroelectric power you count the evaporation from the dam reservoir as "used water".

I'm not an expert but imo correct accounting should really only consider direct consumption. It's very silly when we play games like having petro states have very high carbon footprints even if they don't actually burn the fuel.

Am I correct that your argument is something like, "AI endangers our water supply"? If so, what evidence would it take for you to change your mind? Maybe someone here can provide it.

No.

The argument is that water management policy is lacking and supplies are dwindling, shouldn’t we have better oversight of this resource before we let corporations run full speed ahead?

the e p what?

The entire premise of The Simpsons Movie is an artifact of another time. Sigh.

Water pollution bigger danger than water usage. Look up videos of people whose water changes color after a data center was built nearby.

They cause all kinds of problems. We could even include all of the new methane power plants that will likely need to be built.

Some 1400 cubic kilometers of water evaporate every day on our blue planet here. The water isn't deleted, really.

Ah you haven’t read the latest reports. We’re losing fresh water at a rate faster than models had anticipated. Once it joins the ocean, it takes a painfully long time to build up on land again. And with rising temperatures it’s not being retained on land as much.

World is getting thirsty.

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