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Comment by SilverElfin | Hacker News Reader

Is it a canard? In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Even if datacenters are highly efficient, if the water supply is strained, you can pollute people’s supply by drawing wells down too far and things like that.

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This happened to me in the middle of the city of Philadelphia when construction of a new apartment building caused a water main collapse. Took them three days to repair. It wasn't anyone's fault. The pipe was simply very old. My water had soil in it and basically I had to run the water until all the soil was flushed. Could have been a lot worse and thankfully I was renting. A lot of these situations are simple construction issues and old pipes. It's not like a data center is pushing gray water into the system.

When AOC is waving a jar of brown water in congress she's being disengenous. Just like the killed Amazon office in NYC it's just gonna kill jobs.

>In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing.

Can you cite a source for this? I can't find it anywhere.

The other comment is correct. I meant QTS in Georgia

I thought that might be what you were referring to. As far as I know the issues there were construction causing turbidity, and water used for construction accidentally going metered. Neither are really relevant to it being a datacenter. Apparently it'll use closed-loop cooling, so it's not going to draw much water in operation either.

It does seem like a canard.

https://dustinrhone.substack.com/p/on-fayetteville-georgia

There are lots of nonsensical stories like this circulating on social media right now. Water draw for datacenters can't turn tap water brown. That's a supply or piping issue.

https://hellawater.com/why-is-my-water-brown-causes-solution... Here's one link amongst many a quick Google search that explains how low system pressure from increased demand can cause discolored water. (Check out the section on municipal water supply disruptions) I live in new orleans and entire neighborhoods need to boil water in periods of high demand.

Me: "that's a supply or piping issue"

Your page: "This discoloration happens because of rust, dirt, or old pipes in your plumbing. Problems with the city water supply can also cause it."

We're saying the same thing. It's the responsibility of the water system to pump clean water to people. Customers actually using that service can't be blamed for the system's failure to deliver it, as the customers aren't actually making the water brown themselves.

Or the responsibility of the city government not to permit a project which exceeds the capacity of the system to handle

That's a strawman, nobody is saying that the datacenters are directly turning the water brown. But if adding a single customer (the datacenters) causes the supply not being able to meet the demand and the water turns brown, then yes the datacenters was the cause. Saying it's a supply issue is like if I come to a party at your house and load all the drinks into my car and saying that there's no drinks left is a supply issue

Hyperscalers are a drain on existing infrastructure- which is exactly why the Netherlands banned them.

Companies are in the business of privatizing profits and socialising losses.

It is absolutely not a canard. The vast majority of data centers use evaporative cooling which is in fact a major consumer of water.

The industry is pushing a line about little to no use of water based on the "existence" of closed loop designs. But even the closed loop designs come with major drawbacks and require investment in waste water treatment infrastructure since they still have to "bleed the lines" monthly to get rid of the sludge that is now full of anti-freeze, PFAS, anti-fungals, and anti-corrosives.

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