This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
two high-capacity water connections were not being properly monitored. One had been installed without the utility's knowledge, and another was not tied to a billing account.
Yeah, you don't just "accidentally" install an "extra" water pipeline like that.
Who tf got paid under the table.
Funny story there.
I once moved in to a property development where the development collectively paid for water access.
The water was turned on for the developers during construction, but when construction was finished, the city closed the account without remembering to transfer to the strata. So the strata went for almost 10 years without paying beyond the base rate for water, before someone investigated. At that point, the city only back-dated the water use bill to the start of the year, thankfully for the homeowners.
So yeah, it happens, probably pretty regularly.
I just bought a house which has a pump and water line for garden hoses and irrigation
I have no idea where the water is coming from
The house has a well, but the irrigation system is completely separate and has a pipe running somewhere that I have no idea about.
You could flip the breaker off for the well to find out.
Once there's no more pressure from the well, if the irrigation system keeps pressure, you know wherever that water comes from, it's not your hole.
Pretty much anyone else would be facing prison
But it was a company that did it. You can't put a company in prison.
Since it's known how much water they've used, the problem is possible to rectify.
At the same time the accident's father in local government should be in a place where you carry your soup very carefully.
$147,474 / 29,000,000 gal = $0.0051 / gal
A homeowner in Fayetteville GA would probably be paying anywhere from $30-$80 or so per month, but they certainly aren't getting nearly as much water per dollar as this data center.
Water is generally billed at 1k gal rate. $5.10 is still about 1/12 of what I pay (which is high because crumpling infrastructure).
Got to keep these servers cool so elon can have grok generate porn…
Think of the actual children we're saving.
Less demand for actual children - lower prices for trafficking, which improves every pedo's level of life, think of the pedos
Now I has a sad. I did before, but now I still do too.
It's still under construction! It's not even up and running.
These data centers absolutely run while still under construction. I've personally worked in a couple.
Honestly question though ....
Does a data centre actually pollute or dirty the water when used to cool it's stuff?
Could it not just take the water, run it through the system, heat the water a little bit to cool the stuff it needs, then run the water back into the city lines which might even save people a few cents on the water heating bills?
Infrastructure in this country is already fucked. These old pipes were not built to carry hot water. That's how you get nasty shit to leech into it.
My question, which seems to have no answer beyond, "it costs money," is: why the fuck does the water they use need to be potable in the first place? Grey water is a thing. You don't use treated drinking water for this shit, it's such an insane waste of resources.
If anything, at the very least, these data centers should be forced to house their own treatment plants to treat the water when they're done with it so it can re-enter the system.
The “it costs money” argument comes after the center is built and they’re talking about fixing the issue they won’t really fix. During construction they lied their asses off and said they would use some fraction of the amount of water they actually do so everyone said sure here’s your permit. I’ll but a dozen donuts that’s what happened.
In a closed loop cooling system for a water cooled PC you use distilled water to prevent things growing in it which would require the system to be purged and cleaned and refilled. Which would use more water. So for cooling a data center I'm sure it's a similar deal.
They can probably use grey water for the construction (which is where the 29 million gallons of water were used in this instance), so I don't know why they didn't other than the sheer amount of water needed and whether or not grey water was available to be used.
So what you're telling me is that "it would cost more."
Yes. I know.
would require the system to be purged and cleaned and refilled. Which would use more water.
More grey water. Not potable drinking water.
Sorry, I just don't believe that corporations with this much money and resources couldn't figure out a way to cool it without using drinking water. That's bullshit.
I have one question. Where exactly are you expecting them to get that amount of gray water?
A data center uses approximately 600,000 gallons of water annually. Of that, it looks like the closed loop cooling system uses 25% of that (150,000 gallons).
Where are they slurping up 150,000 gallons of gray water from? They aren't keeping rain tanks on the premises to feed into the system when they start the whole thing up. Are they just slurping it up from a lake? Why is that preferable? And let's say they do that? Algae bloom in the cooling system causing them to gobble up 150,000 gallons more water is better?
Even construction sites (who are used this water in the article by the way) use potable water because not doing so effects how much time it takes for concrete to set.
What I'm saying is, yeah, data centers as a whole for AI are bullshit. By the same token, the internet you use everyday (without any AI use at all) also uses data centers and they also use the same kinds of resources (because the majority of water used in AI that effects the environment detrimentally comes from training models, not from AI use from the general public).
So are you also mad at all the other data centers or just the AI ones?
So are you also mad at all the other data centers or just the AI ones?
Oh do you mean data centers that actually provide a benefit to the public?
Just out of curiosity, do you think all non-AI data centers provide a benefit to the public?
OK cool, then I am against the ones that don't provide a benefit to the public
The problem is that's not what happened here. This data center is under construction. It's not operational yet. So the construction used this water over a period of months for dust control and mixing concrete and so on and weren't billed for it.
Also, the way data centers are supposed to use cooling is something called a closed loop. It's similar to what you have in your vehicle. Or a liquid cooling setup in a computer. So the water isn't supposed to go back into the cities water table or their treatment system.
The water from the construction will do that but it is no longer potable so it has to be retreated to be safe to drink etc.
heat the water a little bit to cool the stuff it needs
No. Heating the water a little bit would not be sufficient at cooling what the datacenters need to cool. You have to heat the water a whole hell of a lot.
Well, yes it wouldn't heat it a "little bit" at the source but once added back into the system the average increase would probably be a "little bit".
You’re basing that on what exactly
I was wondering the same thing. Turns out thermal pollution is a thing. They would heat a lake at that rate.
There are ways to cool water and recycle it. If they are using that much water, I bet they cannot cycle water because it wouldn't cool fast enough.
If I "use without a bill" water, money, groceries, etc, it's a felony, even if it's only 0.1% of what this company stole. Why are they sanewashing this behavior!?
Because laws are only for the poor.
