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I understand electricity usage... But water "usage"? The water is not used, heat is transferred to the water, and then it is available again, right? Am I missing something? Is the heat the big problem? Why do we call it "usage"? Is it actual tap-water that could have been put to other use?

Water that had some heat transferred to it sounds like perfectly well usable water, right...?

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Most of Nebraska’s water comes from a rapidly depleting source that renews very slowly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

I'd assume that most datacenters use evaporative cooling, since it does consume water directly and is pretty cheap. Some web searches on the topic were swamped with companies trying to pitch their solutions (as if I'm in that market??) but this[1] link looks... slightly less suspicious.

Dealing with waste hot-water sounds like a PITA. Piping it straight back to the reservoir would need a dedicated pipeline, probably with insulation so you don't bake everything around it. Harnessing the excess heat on-site would be awesome, although I'm sure datacenters would already doing this as best they can to recoup electricity costs.

[1] https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/cooling/evaporative-cool...

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