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Comment by _DeadFred_ | Hacker News Reader

Do Alfalfa growers traditionally use limited (and funded at large expense by the local community) municipal water hookups to grow their crops? Are alfalfa growers asking for new water hookup permits to access these resources?

Because DCs are, and that is the concern local communities have. Not random comparative statistics whose purpose seems to be to take valid local community concerns and pretend they're just a joke. How much do alfa growers in California add to my water bill? How much will new municipal water hookups by new data centers impact my water bill? One is a valid concern. One is just a BS attempt to discredit the valid concern. Because that is how this shady industry operates. On BS. On manipulation. And they wonder why they are more and more disliked.

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It is a sort of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

The reason these DC use so much water is because it uses less electricity to evaporatively cool than it takes to cool with a heat pump.

You are trading water scarcity for energy scarcity.

In my personal opinion, the right tradeoff is more electricity. Also IMO, these DCs should be required to build out solar + battery + wind offset plants which supply their energy either directly or indirectly by selling to the grid operator at a discounted rate. If you want 40MW of power, you need to deploy 40MW of solar (not peak, but yearly average output) and a 400MWh battery plus all the grid hookups required.

The end result for residence should be lower energy bills, not higher bills.

> Do Alfalfa growers traditionally use limited (and funded at large expense by the local community) municipal water hookups to grow their crops? Are alfalfa growers asking for new water hookup permits to access these resources?

No, you already know they use flood irrigation.

Why is a municipal water system allowing a data center connection that will strain their distribution network? They’re well within their rights to say no, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t holding a gun to their heads.

> Why is a municipal water system allowing a data center connection that will strain their distribution network? They’re well within their rights to say no, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t holding a gun to their heads.

Deep pockets have a way of bypassing practical concerns. [1]

Zuckerberg likely isn't holding a gun to their heads, instead it's more likely he's putting wads of cash in their pockets.

[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/08/texas-corpus-christi...

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