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Comment by janice1999 | Hacker News Reader

janice1999

There's a Microsoft datacenter being built on the proposed Foxconn site and it will use 8.4 million gallons of water per year, so I guess industry got its way eventually?

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> 8.4 million gallons of water per year

That is <10% of the amount of water required to grow corn on the same land as the data center. Acre for acre, data centers consume a tiny fraction of the water consumed by agriculture.

Are the corn subsidies to produce high-fructose corn syrup and ethanol that important?

What, it will use as much as a small village or subdivision? As much as 80 average US households? That doesn't seem noteworthy at all.

> 8.4 million gallons of water per year

8.4M US gal/year * 3.785 US gal/litre / (365 24 60 * 60) = 1 litre per second.

Put another way, if the average US household uses 138 US gal/day [0] then this is 8.4M / 365 / 138 = 168 average households.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_water_use_in_the_U...

Whenever I hear water measured in gallons instead of acre feet, I know someone is trying to exaggerate the amount.

East of the Rockies this is an unnoticeable amount of water.

East of the rockies suffers from the problem of water being so unlimited nobody paid it any attention and let the desert states let federal policy reflect their problems and priorities to their detriment.

I think this is because when the water table is as saturated as it is in much of the east, there's no sense in trying to conserve. The water pumped out of the river just ends up on the ground, goes in the watershed, and back down the river. Caveat: Note that I'm talking about surface water. Fossil water sources like the Ogallala Aquifer being overused are another story entirely.

>when the water table is as saturated as it is in much of the east, there's no sense in trying to conserve. The water pumped out of the river just ends up on the ground, goes in the watershed, and back down the river.

The laws of nature may agree with you but the laws of man do not and lawfulness comes at great expense.

For folks like me who are trying to visualize 8.4 million gallons of water:

Quick back-of-the-napkin suggest that it's about as much as would fit in a round pool just under 500ft (~150 meters) across, 6ft (1.8 meters) deep.

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