5 ms·

Tech companies defeat bill as AI drains local water supplies

39 points by laurex 7mo ago

adrianN 7mo ago
How much higher would the energy cost be without evaporative cooling? It doesn’t seem that hard to use water-air heat pumps to get rid of the heat without any water use, so the reasons it’s not used are probably economic. I suppose you could just make water more expensive?
- bob1029 7mo ago
  Evaporative cooling gives you a COP beyond 20 in good conditions. It can be 4-5x more efficient than a heat pump.
  - perfmode 7mo ago
    Indirect evaporative systems average around COP 17.5 and dew-point systems can hit ~30, so your numbers check out for the best cases. Worth noting that direct liquid cooling with dry heat rejection is now achieving PUE 1.03-1.06 with near-zero water, which narrows the effective gap considerably for the high-density AI racks that are driving most new builds.
- perfmode 7mo ago
  Vertiv published a 10-year TCO analysis for a 3 MW facility that found waterless systems actually achieved lower overall cost despite higher energy draw, because water treatment, legionella testing, RO filtration, and cooling tower maintenance add up fast. The PUE penalty is typically +0.1 to +0.4, so roughly 10-25% more energy for a hyperscaler currently at PUE ~1.1. Microsoft announced all new builds from late 2027 onward will use zero water for cooling via closed-loop liquid cooling, which suggests the economics have already tipped for new construction.
denotational 7mo ago
Has anyone looked at using greywater for evaporative cooling? I couldn’t find much after a quick Google, aside from small scale domestic usage.
- perfmode 7mo ago
  It’s already happening at scale. AWS expanded recycled water use to 120+ facilities by late 2025, Google’s Douglas County GA site has used 100% recycled municipal wastewater for cooling since 2008, and Microsoft built a $31M water reuse utility in Quincy WA that cut their potable water use by 97%. The main technical challenges are higher mineral loads causing scaling on heat exchange surfaces and increased Legionella risk from biofilm formation, but these are well-understood treatment problems with roughly a 6-year payback on the additional infrastructure.
supern0va 7mo ago
I think it's super cool that Olympia HS has a student run newspaper, but I don't think this is something that should be posted to HN. The only source quoted on the water issue is an EE professor from a school in California, who I am guessing is not a subject matter expert on water in Washington state. FWIW, as a Washington resident, I can say that we're not exactly a state worrying about water shortages. We're probably one of the more reasonable places to build data centers due to cheap green energy and pretty plentiful water. Obviously, we need to manage it responsibly, but I haven't seen any evidence of looming issues here (please feel free to correct me, though).
- techsupporter 7mo ago
  > I can say that we're not exactly a state worrying about water shortages. Except we are. > We're probably one of the more reasonable places to build data centers due to cheap green energy and pretty plentiful water. Most of our water comes from snowpack that melts over the spring and summer. Almost every year for the last several years, snowpack has been abnormal and has affected downstream flows. https://ecology.wa.gov/water-shorelines/water-supply/water-availability/statewide-conditions/drought-response https://ecology.wa.gov/water-shorelines/water-supply/water-a... https://www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/en/us/state/washington/current-drought-conditions https://www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.co... https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/november-2021/snowpack-washington-water-supplies https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/november-2021/snowpack-washingto... And datacenter construction has put a major strain on central Washington power and water supplies: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/power-hungry-how-the-data-center-boom-drained-wa-of-hydropower/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/pow...
- jakelazaroff 7mo ago
  > I think it's super cool that Olympia HS has a student run newspaper, but I don't think this is something that should be posted to HN. Why shouldn't it? The thoughts and opinions of high schoolers matter just as much as those of adults.
  - 7mo ago
Ygg2 7mo ago
Why are they using blue water? Can't they just use grey water?
- bloaf 7mo ago
  That's the thing with evaporation: you don't want your water to leave stuff behind after it evaporates because that will foul your equipment and cause lower efficiency. You could in principle design systems with enough fouling mitigations that you'd be fine, but its likely that the cost of those mitigations is roughly the same as just purifying the water up-front.
  - archagon 7mo ago
    But then... don't you need to distill the water anyway? It's not like blue water lacks impurities.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
- perfmode 7mo ago
  Short answer: several operators already do. The barrier isn’t technical, it’s proximity to a municipal wastewater source and willingness to invest in on-site treatment (pre-filtration, ultrafiltration, partial RO, ongoing biocide dosing). Recycled water typically costs 30-50% less than potable once the treatment infrastructure is in place.
teeray 7mo ago
> Despite efforts to enforce clean energy, the bill died in committee I wish it was easy to force issues like this into ballot measures. The citizenry should be able to rip control out of the hands of their representatives when so motivated.
fallingfrog 7mo ago
It's funny that in movies like the matrix they imagine that humanity would fight back against the machines. In reality the first thing ai will do, which it has already done, is capture our governments through the application of money, and then the humans would first have to defeat their own institutions before they can even begin to fight the machines. Neoliberalism is profoundly unable to deal with threats if the threats produce short term profits. That goes for housing shortages, global warming, health care costs, falling birth rates, across the board if it produces short term profits that can be used to bribe politicians its impossible to address. AI is no different.
jandrewrogers 7mo ago
The amount of water mentioned in the article is completely inconsequential. Per the article, across 126 data centers they consume several foot-acres of water per day. That is incredibly efficient! Annualized, that is 0.0001% of the water used to produce subsidized corn ethanol. If we can afford to waste that much water on corn ethanol subsidies then we can definitely afford the water for data centers. HB 2125 was killed by the Democrats because it was a deeply unserious bill unrelated to this. For example, it required data centers to turn off their power during ordinary periods of high electricity usage. Because, you know, we can just randomly turn off the Internet during the day and there will be no bad consequences.
drivingmenuts 7mo ago
Well, seeing as how AI will be replacing humans, all the humans can just move out of the state. Problem solved!

39 points by laurex 7mo ago

How much higher would the energy cost be without evaporative cooling? It doesn’t seem that hard to use water-air heat pumps to get rid of the heat without any water use, so the reasons it’s not used are probably economic. I suppose you could just make water more expensive?

bob1029 7mo ago
Evaporative cooling gives you a COP beyond 20 in good conditions. It can be 4-5x more efficient than a heat pump.
- perfmode 7mo ago
  Indirect evaporative systems average around COP 17.5 and dew-point systems can hit ~30, so your numbers check out for the best cases. Worth noting that direct liquid cooling with dry heat rejection is now achieving PUE 1.03-1.06 with near-zero water, which narrows the effective gap considerably for the high-density AI racks that are driving most new builds.
perfmode 7mo ago
Vertiv published a 10-year TCO analysis for a 3 MW facility that found waterless systems actually achieved lower overall cost despite higher energy draw, because water treatment, legionella testing, RO filtration, and cooling tower maintenance add up fast. The PUE penalty is typically +0.1 to +0.4, so roughly 10-25% more energy for a hyperscaler currently at PUE ~1.1. Microsoft announced all new builds from late 2027 onward will use zero water for cooling via closed-loop liquid cooling, which suggests the economics have already tipped for new construction.

denotational 7mo ago

Has anyone looked at using greywater for evaporative cooling? I couldn’t find much after a quick Google, aside from small scale domestic usage.

perfmode 7mo ago
It’s already happening at scale. AWS expanded recycled water use to 120+ facilities by late 2025, Google’s Douglas County GA site has used 100% recycled municipal wastewater for cooling since 2008, and Microsoft built a $31M water reuse utility in Quincy WA that cut their potable water use by 97%. The main technical challenges are higher mineral loads causing scaling on heat exchange surfaces and increased Legionella risk from biofilm formation, but these are well-understood treatment problems with roughly a 6-year payback on the additional infrastructure.

supern0va 7mo ago

I think it's super cool that Olympia HS has a student run newspaper, but I don't think this is something that should be posted to HN. The only source quoted on the water issue is an EE professor from a school in California, who I am guessing is not a subject matter expert on water in Washington state. FWIW, as a Washington resident, I can say that we're not exactly a state worrying about water shortages. We're probably one of the more reasonable places to build data centers due to cheap green energy and pretty plentiful water. Obviously, we need to manage it responsibly, but I haven't seen any evidence of looming issues here (please feel free to correct me, though).

techsupporter 7mo ago
> I can say that we're not exactly a state worrying about water shortages. Except we are. > We're probably one of the more reasonable places to build data centers due to cheap green energy and pretty plentiful water. Most of our water comes from snowpack that melts over the spring and summer. Almost every year for the last several years, snowpack has been abnormal and has affected downstream flows. https://ecology.wa.gov/water-shorelines/water-supply/water-availability/statewide-conditions/drought-response https://ecology.wa.gov/water-shorelines/water-supply/water-a... https://www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/en/us/state/washington/current-drought-conditions https://www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.co... https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/november-2021/snowpack-washington-water-supplies https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/november-2021/snowpack-washingto... And datacenter construction has put a major strain on central Washington power and water supplies: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/power-hungry-how-the-data-center-boom-drained-wa-of-hydropower/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/pow...
jakelazaroff 7mo ago
> I think it's super cool that Olympia HS has a student run newspaper, but I don't think this is something that should be posted to HN. Why shouldn't it? The thoughts and opinions of high schoolers matter just as much as those of adults.
- 7mo ago

Ygg2 7mo ago

Why are they using blue water? Can't they just use grey water?

bloaf 7mo ago
That's the thing with evaporation: you don't want your water to leave stuff behind after it evaporates because that will foul your equipment and cause lower efficiency. You could in principle design systems with enough fouling mitigations that you'd be fine, but its likely that the cost of those mitigations is roughly the same as just purifying the water up-front.
- archagon 7mo ago
  But then... don't you need to distill the water anyway? It's not like blue water lacks impurities.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
perfmode 7mo ago
Short answer: several operators already do. The barrier isn’t technical, it’s proximity to a municipal wastewater source and willingness to invest in on-site treatment (pre-filtration, ultrafiltration, partial RO, ongoing biocide dosing). Recycled water typically costs 30-50% less than potable once the treatment infrastructure is in place.

teeray 7mo ago

> Despite efforts to enforce clean energy, the bill died in committee I wish it was easy to force issues like this into ballot measures. The citizenry should be able to rip control out of the hands of their representatives when so motivated.

fallingfrog 7mo ago

It's funny that in movies like the matrix they imagine that humanity would fight back against the machines. In reality the first thing ai will do, which it has already done, is capture our governments through the application of money, and then the humans would first have to defeat their own institutions before they can even begin to fight the machines. Neoliberalism is profoundly unable to deal with threats if the threats produce short term profits. That goes for housing shortages, global warming, health care costs, falling birth rates, across the board if it produces short term profits that can be used to bribe politicians its impossible to address. AI is no different.

jandrewrogers 7mo ago

The amount of water mentioned in the article is completely inconsequential. Per the article, across 126 data centers they consume several foot-acres of water per day. That is incredibly efficient! Annualized, that is 0.0001% of the water used to produce subsidized corn ethanol. If we can afford to waste that much water on corn ethanol subsidies then we can definitely afford the water for data centers. HB 2125 was killed by the Democrats because it was a deeply unserious bill unrelated to this. For example, it required data centers to turn off their power during ordinary periods of high electricity usage. Because, you know, we can just randomly turn off the Internet during the day and there will be no bad consequences.

drivingmenuts 7mo ago

Well, seeing as how AI will be replacing humans, all the humans can just move out of the state. Problem solved!