[newfocogi]

I found a lot of value in this article. Out of frustration with people who are alarmist over how much water a datacenter "consumes" compared to households, I've probably erred too often towards:

'People sometimes invoke the idea that water moves through a cycle and never really gets destroyed, in order to suggest that we don’t need to be concerned at all about water use. But while water may not get destroyed, it can get “used up” in the sense that it becomes infeasible or uneconomic to access it.'

Side note, this personal anecdote from the author caught me off guard: "my monthly water bill is roughly 5% of the cost of my monthly electricity bill". I'm in the American southwest (but not arid desert like parts of Arizona/Nevada/Utah), and my monthly water cost averages out annually to ~60% of the cost of electricity. Makes me wonder if my water prices are high, if my electricity prices are low, if my water usage is high or my electricity usage is low.

[adrr]

Biggest alarmist is movement against Nestle using water for bottled water in California. They don’t even use as much as an average golf course.

How much water is wasted on golf courses in these arid regions? Or growing water intensive crops like alfalfa that isn’t even directly used to feed people.

[recallingmemory]

Yep, 1.6 trillion gallons of water from the Colorado river goes into irrigation for alfalfa[1]. Google's total water consumption across all data centers in 2023 was 6.4 billion gallons[2].

People are sounding the alarm about water usage in AI data centers while ignoring the real unsustainable industries like animal agriculture.

1: https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/04/research-colorado-river-w...

2: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/google-emissions-...

[seanalltogether]

I remember doing the calculations on the Nestle plant that caused a big storm a few years ago. The plant sat on several acres of land, which if converted into an alfalfa farm, would have consumed the same amount of water. The surrounding area was littered with alfalfa farms so it wasn't an unfair comparison. Meanwhile that bottling plant employs dozens of people, far more then a farm would have.

[sellmesoap]

There are a lot of historical reasons for people to be angry at Nestle, aside from their impact on water.

[celestialcheese]

nit: Nestle sold off it's water brands in 2021 to a private equity group.[0][1]

0 - https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2025/05/09/nestle-to-s... 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l2Bas81NDY

[tsongas4]

Right cause we have all gone and measured truth. Not just read possibly biased information off a screen.

Asimov wrote about this in Foundation. If you are not checking yourself it's blind faith in inherently self selecting dishonest people

[kjkjadksj]

Many golf courses in arid regions are on greywater.

[datatrashfire]

Why is water used for golf a waste vs other uses?

[bongodongobob]

The issue with Nestle is that they are paying pennies on the dollar compared to the public because "muh job creation" or something to that effect.

[FredPret]

> How much water is wasted on golf courses...

Zero. You can't waste water, it goes in a cycle.

I mean unless you transport it off-planet.

You can waste the energy you spent cleaning it and pumping it around. But between nuclear and solar we ought to have an overabundance of that.

In a market economy, if it becomes "economically infeasible" to purify used water, the price goes up slightly, and suddenly it makes a lot more sense to treat dirty water, or even seawater.

You see the same type of argument against oil or mineral use; the idea that we'll run out. But people who argue we'll run out almost always look at confirmed reserves that are economical to extract right now. When prices rise, this sends a signal to prospectors and miners to go look for more, and it also makes far more reserves economical.

For example, Alberta's oil sands were never counted as oil reserves in bygone decades, because mining it made no sense at the time. But the economy grew per capita and overall, prices rose, and suddenly Canada is an oil-rich nation.

A similar dynamic applies to water and everything else.

Of course there are finite amounts of oil and uranium and so on, but the amounts just on this one planet are absolutely mind-boggling. The Earth has a radius of 6400km, and our deepest mines are 3-4km. We may expect richer mineral deposits (not oil) as we go further down.

Keep following this price logic and at a certain point it'll make sense to mine the far side of the moon, the asteroid belt, and so on ad infinitum.

[LeifCarrotson]

Here in Michigan, my water price is also about 5% of my electric bill. Which is also small, we barely used the AC this summer.

Water billing here is (frustratingly) not progressive: the first thousand gallons costs the same as the tenth or hundredth thousand gallons. It's cheap, we're surrounded by fresh water on the surface and you can stick a well down through 80-100 feet of glacial sand and gravel and get drinkable water basically anywhere.

I was surprised to learn that 70% of my township's municipal water is used by only 15% of the households: basically, those that irrigate their lawns daily.

[ralusek]

Why should it be progressive if it's not even scarce there? Why are you trying to punish people unnecessarily?

[hammock]

>I'm in the American southwest (but not arid desert like parts of Arizona/Nevada/Utah)

Doesn’t matter whether you are in the desert or not, only matters if you are in a shared watershed with them. There is huge agricultural demand for water and water rights in those areas which translates to high prices for the areas where they can source water (like your presumably more-watered location)

[gdubs]

I think the water-usage stuff regarding data centers is really lacking context in online discourse – and yet, I still believe that freshwater usage really needs to be more of a concern for people, generally. I'm not 'anti-AI' but, I cringe a bit every time someone dismissively says "water cycle" to dismiss concerns around freshwater because, some aquifers are not going to recharge in a meaningful timeframe. That water isn't 'destroyed' – but if a town is tight on water already, it's not necessarily coming back, practically speaking.

[password4321]

I would like to know how much water is taken by a datacenter vs. the same size space of apartments. I can see why it could be considered a bad choice for communities long term if a datacenter takes more.

[azemetre]

The government in The Dalles, Oregon were suing local newspapers that were questioning Google's water usage in the city:

https://www.rcfp.org/dalles-google-oregonian-settlement/

Apparently Google uses nearly 30% of the city's water supply:

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-wa...

I highly doubt any apartment block comes close to taking 30% of a city's water supply.

[jeffbee]

Some quick napkin math using averages (data center designs vary). One of Google's larger and thirstier data centers, in Oklahoma, is said to use 833 million gallons per year (that's about 2500 acre-feet, in useful terms). It occupies about 250 acres, most of which looks to be parking lots but whatever. The number of households that can be supported on 1 acre-foot per year ranges from 2 to 6 depending (Las Vegas on one end, San Francisco on the other).

You said apartments specifically and this urban form usually starts at 50 dwellings per acre, minimum, which would lead me to say the apartments use more water. The break-even point in this equation is 2-5 households per acre.

[NegativeLatency]

Apples and oranges, you can compare the water usage, but places for people to live aren't in the same category as datacenters.

[maxerickson]

With no AC and gas hot water, my monthly water bill is ~150% of my electric (that water cost is not including the wastewater that is billed on the water metering).

My water usage is pretty average and my electric usage is apparently hilariously low.

[abullinan]

I live in the northwest US. My water bill is 110%-120% of my electric bill.

[pluto_modadic]

a datacenter getting "priority" over potable water to feed the data farms instead of, say, requiring "humans first, datacenter if there's any left"

[testing22321]

It staggers me you’ve never wondered these things before.

You’re paying money and using resources and you’ve never looked into the details?

Living in Australia where both are expensive and very finite it’s a must.

[newfocogi]

I track my water usage and electricity usage every month. I'm confused why the cost ratio is off by an order of magnitude from the author. The base monthly charge of my water bill ignoring any usage is more then 10% of my largest electricity bill (so maybe that's the answer right there).

[hinkley]

We have the fourth largest river basin in the world. And four mountain ranges.