3 ms·

That is a number that gets quoted, but I just ran the latest numbers for my local city. A couple of dozen planned data centers, with an estimated combined use

by RajT88 2mo ago

That is a number that gets quoted, but I just ran the latest numbers for my local city. A couple of dozen planned data centers, with an estimated combined use of 160k gallons per day. Apparently the average household uses 300 gallons a day, which seems insane to me. I guess a lot of people water their lawns. That gets us to a mere 23 households per data center. Even with 100 gallons per day per household or less, the local data centers are not at 1000 households per data center. And where I live, water is not a concern. They are building a pipe out from Lake Michigan, which has been in the works now for 10 years. That primarily gets the tri-city area off of the aquifers which have been drained at an unsustainable rate for the last 100 years. If I lived along the Colorado river system, that's a different discussion.

otterley 2mo ago
The Colorado water system is a disaster that long predates the invention of computers. The way water rights are implemented in the western US (doctrine of prior appropriation) meant that anyone who owned land through which the river flowed could take enough of it to plant lettuce in the desert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuma_Lettuce_Days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuma_Lettuce_Days That's nuts. These practices took so much water that native populations could no longer sustain themselves from the river. Complaints about the relatively low use of water by data centers seems pretty weak in comparison, although I still wouldn't locate them in the desert; the desert is a better place to load up with solar and wind farms. https://coloradoriverscience.org/Water_law_and_policy https://coloradoriverscience.org/Water_law_and_policy if you're interested.
- RajT88 2mo ago
  > The Colorado water system is a disaster that long predates the invention of computers. Totally agree, and that's part of why I was bringing it up. I recently was going down the rabbit hole of the story of the Salton Sea. Absolutely insane.

by RajT88 2mo ago

otterley 2mo ago

The Colorado water system is a disaster that long predates the invention of computers. The way water rights are implemented in the western US (doctrine of prior appropriation) meant that anyone who owned land through which the river flowed could take enough of it to plant lettuce in the desert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuma_Lettuce_Days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuma_Lettuce_Days That's nuts. These practices took so much water that native populations could no longer sustain themselves from the river. Complaints about the relatively low use of water by data centers seems pretty weak in comparison, although I still wouldn't locate them in the desert; the desert is a better place to load up with solar and wind farms. https://coloradoriverscience.org/Water_law_and_policy https://coloradoriverscience.org/Water_law_and_policy if you're interested.

RajT88 2mo ago
> The Colorado water system is a disaster that long predates the invention of computers. Totally agree, and that's part of why I was bringing it up. I recently was going down the rabbit hole of the story of the Salton Sea. Absolutely insane.