How do we responsibly plan for clean, drinkable water becoming a resource only people/businesses with a certain income can afford?
At what point do we ask “do we need to use drinking water for cooling servers, or is that just the cheapest design?”
That angle opens the argument to concerns from various fronts, including data center use but also concerning things like agricultural use if that's a concern for you.
The drinking water concern also would hinge on having to define "clean drinking water." Humans have made do with drinking from streams, rivers, and ground water for most of human history. Today into he west at least we largely drink recycled waste water treated with bleach and various other chemicals. Drinkable yes, but I'd personally rather drink some rain water than bleach water.
I just know they have better options for cooling than water, and that fresh water supplies need to be prioritized for other uses as the resource becomes more and more limited.
That scrutiny should be applied to all industries. We can compare agriculture and data centers, but you can’t water plants with coolant.
There are environmental impacts of both the production and disposal of glycol coolants and similar. I'd assume they would at least he disposed of "properly" at the scale of a data center, but even just understanding the externalities on the environment and water use there is a can of worms.