It's just an emotional witch hunt at this point. I get it, societal implications of AI are scary, but protest _that_ instead of cosplaying like an environmentalist.
The general public really has no barometer for judging industrial scale numbers. Anything "million" to the general public is interpreted as "infinity"
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/the-dalles...
> The case represented a major test of Oregon public records law. After The Oregonian/OregonLive requested Google’s records last year, The Dalles sued the news organization to prevent the information’s release. It argued Google’s water use was a “trade secret” exempt from Oregon disclosure requirements.
https://www.rcfp.org/dalles-google-oregonian-settlement/
> Updates: Following the settlement reached between The Oregonian and the city of The Dalles, a Google spokesperson told the Associated Press that the tech company would no longer seek to protect its site-level water-use numbers as a trade secret at any of its data centers nationwide. And after the city turned over Google’s water-use data, The Oregonian reported that the tech company’s water use “nearly tripled in the past five years, and the company’s data centers now consume more than a quarter of all the water used in the city.”
> ...
> The Oregonian first requested records about Google’s water usage in The Dalles last September. But city officials denied the request submitted by business reporter Mike Rogoway, arguing that the records are “trade secrets” exempt from disclosure under the Oregon Public Records Law.
> The newspaper decided to challenge the city’s denial, asking the district attorney for Wasco County to weigh in. After reviewing the city’s rejection, the district attorney sided with The Oregonian, concluding that the city failed to meet its burden to show that Google’s water usage is a trade secret and ordering the city to disclose the requested records.
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In the Nebraska one... https://www.1011now.com/2026/09/30/more-questions-than-answe...
> The Google Data Center in Lincoln, named Agate LLC, claimed their electricity usage and water usage were trade secret information, citing Neb. Rev. State §§ 81-1527; 84-712.05 and NAC TITLE 115, CH. 2. In fact, Google did this for all three data centers, including their sites in Omaha and Papillion.
This isn't only Google claiming this...
https://midwestadvocates.org/legal-victory-judge-orders-rele...
> In an oral ruling delivered during an August 17 hearing, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Stephen Ehlke found that the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) acted unlawfully when it denied a public records request seeking unredacted documents related to electrical load projections at Meta’s Beaver Dam data center. The PSC defended its refusal to release the information, claiming it was a trade secret. Judge Ehlke, however, was not convinced. He ruled that the information did not qualify as a trade secret because it lacked independent economic value, and he ordered its release.
Especially if the resource is drinkable water.
We have real environmental problems, like excess CO2 in the air and forever-chemicals in our biosphere. The narrative must stay with those material issues and not be diverted by trivia.
Evaporated water becomes drinkable water again but not necessarily in the place it was consumed.
And don’t forget that consumption comes on top of the already existing consumption, so at some point you could reach the point of too much consumption. The straw that broke the camels back. There is a reason for that saying.
Agricultural consumption is already a problem but raising the consumption doesn’t help.
Like with CO2, more is more
These arguments about data center water use are so dumb they distract from actual water conservation efforts too.