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AI does not use much water. If you believe it does, like this article does, you have fallen for propaganda and lies, ironic in a post calling everyone using AI

AI does not use much water. If you believe it does, like this article does, you have fallen for propaganda and lies, ironic in a post calling everyone using AI stupid. The main cause of water fear mongering is that one woman’s well was dirty during construction of a data center. First construction is not the center running, and having lived on a well they get dirty for all kinds of reasons.

lowbloodsugar 9d ago
The major hyperscalers report water use: Google consumed 10.9 billion gallons in 2025, up 34%, versus Amazon's disclosed 2.5 billion.
- gorjusborg 9d ago
  Thank you, I wasn't aware they did this: https://sustainability.google/reports/google-2026-environmental-report/ https://sustainability.google/reports/google-2026-environmen... https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/sustainability/amazon-data-center-water-usage https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/sustainability/amazon-data-...
- daedrdev 9d ago
  The Us uses 320 billion gallons a day. Google thus used 0.01% of total US water. Or about 0.6% of the water used to grow almonds
  - phyzome 9d ago
    Now compare to the planned datacenters.
    - daedrdev 9d ago
      US data centers are going to 3x this year. Still not a lot.
      - phyzome 9d ago
        3x the resource usage? Or the raw count?
        daedrdev 8d ago
        3x the compute
- kragen 9d ago
  It's helpful to put this number in context, although if the people you're talking to will do anything to avoid using the metric system, that becomes much more difficult. Fortunately, now we have computers, which are great at unit conversion, so we can cut right through these feeble attempts at obfuscation. In non-medieval units, 10.9 billion gallons per year is 41.3 million cubic meters per year or 1.3 cubic meters per second. The river a few kilometers from me has a discharge of 22000 cubic meters per second (of fresh water dumped into the sea), so Google is the equivalent using 0.006% of the Rio de la Plata. Lake Superior contains 12070 cubic kilometers of water, which is 1.207 × 10¹³ cubic meters, also of fresh water, so Google's current use would dry up Lake Superior in only 290,000 years. Google is mostly not very close to Lake Superior or the Rio de la Plata; a more relevant river might be the Sacramento River, which drains into the San Francisco Bay where Google was born, and it's much smaller than the Rio de la Plata. Specifically, its average discharge is 797m³/s, so Google is using 0.16% of the discharge of the Sacramento River. (But some of that is at datacenters far from California.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Agricultural https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Agricultur... tells us that agriculture in California uses 34.1 million "acre feet" of water per year (Americans will do anything to avoid using the metric system, especially when they're trying to be sneaky). In non-medieval units, that's 42.1 billion cubic meters, and per year, it's 1330 cubic meters per second, almost exactly 1000 times Google's use. Of that, 18% (240 cubic meters per second) is spent on alfalfa, or was in 02014, anyway. One major difference is that you need fresh water, like the water of the Sacramento River, to irrigate crops, but you can cool data centers with salt water from the ocean. It's less convenient, because there are a variety of annoying things that happen with biofouling and corrosion, but that's what you'd do if hyperscalers scaled up by another factor of 100× so that their water usage became large enough to be environmentally significant. But that doesn't happen until they have 100× the computing power they have today. So anybody who tells you AI datacenters are a major water user is lying.
S-E-P 9d ago
datacenters are stinky though and ruin property values. (as well as can, and has, polluted water sources in some cases) I don't disagree with your assertion; however you do have to realize that their grievances, while not completely informed, are not wrong.
- scarmig 9d ago
  Someone complaining about water usage is a very strong indicator that they aren't well-informed enough to contribute anything worth reading, though.
  - S-E-P 9d ago
    You still have to grapple with the merits of their argument to find out if the indicator is correct or not. In a world where everybody seems to be quoting grok with no further thought process you would think people would be more welcoming of someone who is "slightly wrong" on occasion. It's the strongest indicator that a flawed human being got their information not directly from a machine.
    - scarmig 9d ago
      No, I don't. If someone is spreading deception, intentionally or not, then it's entirely within my rights to point out they are without engaging further. If they want to be taken seriously, they have to at least indicate that they are willing to self-correct in the face of direct evidence that they are wrong.
      - S-E-P 9d ago
        > If someone is spreading deception, intentionally or not, then it's entirely within my rights to point out they are without engaging further. What is it with millennials and "rights"? It's a sincere question. People don't owe you anything and neither do you owe me anything, sure... so why do you demand another have a higher standard that you yourself hold to. I know you don't hold yourself to that standard because you would rather nitpick someone on a single inaccuracy then grapple with a very real issue (which you yourself would not appreciate if they did that to you). The respectable thing to do is to note the inaccuracy and approach the valid portion of the argument sincerely. What you demonstrate is a lack of care for those around you, and a lack of care for what is actually true. You would rather "umm actually" then treat others with an ounce of respect. It's shameful and devoid of grace.
gorjusborg 9d ago
And what are you basing that understanding on? https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co... According to EESI (a bipartisan-founded non-profit), a large data center: > can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people. Also noting that AI datacenters can use more.
- 6031769 9d ago
  Consume it how, exactly? Are the staff drinking it all? Because the the kit sure as hell isn't. :-/
  - gorjusborg 9d ago
    From the article: > Approximately 80% of the water (typically freshwater) withdrawn by data centers evaporates, with the remaining water discharged to municipal wastewater facilities.
- HedonicEscal8r 9d ago
  Is that supposed be a lot? That article states that all US data centers combined consume 450 million gallons a day, equivalent to 90 towns, which does not sound like very much.
  - gorjusborg 9d ago
    I'm not the one here making assertions, I'm asking questions of the person making claims. I'll leave it to others to judge what is 'a lot' or 'reasonable'. I don't think 'anyone who thinks X is Y' is a good basis for discussion, which is the real point.
- preg_match 9d ago
  This sounds like a lot, but it’s actually not very much. I mean, one singular almond requires 1,000 gallons of water. Beef requires shit ton, too. Go vegan for a few weeks and you’ve just negated all your AI water use for the rest of your lifetime.
phyzome 9d ago
You can always tell an AI apologist by how they latch onto the water thing and ignore the electricity, air pollution, noise pollution, etc.
- daedrdev 9d ago
  The electricity, air pollution and noise pollution are all from natural gas. Data centers aren’t loud, on site temporary natural gas turbines are. We can instead install solar and batteries and none of these will be issues. We already grow corn for fuel at 1/10th the land efficiency of solar so it’s not like we don’t have the land for it
  - zahlman 9d ago
    I feel like there's a huge political/economic opportunity in the US simply from getting government to shift subsidies from corn/ethanol to solar. Of course you also have to get buy-in from the farmers, but.
  - phyzome 9d ago
    I'm not talking about hypothetical possible futures in which people do the right thing. The datacenters that are being built right now and which are in operation right now use single-stage gas turbines, last I checked. HVAC equipment can also cause a lot of noise pollution all on its own.
- scarmig 9d ago
  You could, you know, stop spreading deception about water usage if it bothers you so much when people call out deception about water usage. At this point, I almost consider it trolling to bring it up: purposely throw in something incredibly stupid, and then throw a hissy fit when predictably called out on it.
  - phyzome 9d ago
    I, personally, do not bring up the water thing. So you're talking to the wrong person here.

lowbloodsugar 9d ago

The major hyperscalers report water use: Google consumed 10.9 billion gallons in 2025, up 34%, versus Amazon's disclosed 2.5 billion.

gorjusborg 9d ago
Thank you, I wasn't aware they did this: https://sustainability.google/reports/google-2026-environmental-report/ https://sustainability.google/reports/google-2026-environmen... https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/sustainability/amazon-data-center-water-usage https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/sustainability/amazon-data-...
daedrdev 9d ago
The Us uses 320 billion gallons a day. Google thus used 0.01% of total US water. Or about 0.6% of the water used to grow almonds
- phyzome 9d ago
  Now compare to the planned datacenters.
  - daedrdev 9d ago
    US data centers are going to 3x this year. Still not a lot.
    - phyzome 9d ago
      3x the resource usage? Or the raw count?
      - daedrdev 8d ago
        3x the compute
kragen 9d ago
It's helpful to put this number in context, although if the people you're talking to will do anything to avoid using the metric system, that becomes much more difficult. Fortunately, now we have computers, which are great at unit conversion, so we can cut right through these feeble attempts at obfuscation. In non-medieval units, 10.9 billion gallons per year is 41.3 million cubic meters per year or 1.3 cubic meters per second. The river a few kilometers from me has a discharge of 22000 cubic meters per second (of fresh water dumped into the sea), so Google is the equivalent using 0.006% of the Rio de la Plata. Lake Superior contains 12070 cubic kilometers of water, which is 1.207 × 10¹³ cubic meters, also of fresh water, so Google's current use would dry up Lake Superior in only 290,000 years. Google is mostly not very close to Lake Superior or the Rio de la Plata; a more relevant river might be the Sacramento River, which drains into the San Francisco Bay where Google was born, and it's much smaller than the Rio de la Plata. Specifically, its average discharge is 797m³/s, so Google is using 0.16% of the discharge of the Sacramento River. (But some of that is at datacenters far from California.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Agricultural https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Agricultur... tells us that agriculture in California uses 34.1 million "acre feet" of water per year (Americans will do anything to avoid using the metric system, especially when they're trying to be sneaky). In non-medieval units, that's 42.1 billion cubic meters, and per year, it's 1330 cubic meters per second, almost exactly 1000 times Google's use. Of that, 18% (240 cubic meters per second) is spent on alfalfa, or was in 02014, anyway. One major difference is that you need fresh water, like the water of the Sacramento River, to irrigate crops, but you can cool data centers with salt water from the ocean. It's less convenient, because there are a variety of annoying things that happen with biofouling and corrosion, but that's what you'd do if hyperscalers scaled up by another factor of 100× so that their water usage became large enough to be environmentally significant. But that doesn't happen until they have 100× the computing power they have today. So anybody who tells you AI datacenters are a major water user is lying.

S-E-P 9d ago

datacenters are stinky though and ruin property values. (as well as can, and has, polluted water sources in some cases) I don't disagree with your assertion; however you do have to realize that their grievances, while not completely informed, are not wrong.

scarmig 9d ago
Someone complaining about water usage is a very strong indicator that they aren't well-informed enough to contribute anything worth reading, though.
- S-E-P 9d ago
  You still have to grapple with the merits of their argument to find out if the indicator is correct or not. In a world where everybody seems to be quoting grok with no further thought process you would think people would be more welcoming of someone who is "slightly wrong" on occasion. It's the strongest indicator that a flawed human being got their information not directly from a machine.
  - scarmig 9d ago
    No, I don't. If someone is spreading deception, intentionally or not, then it's entirely within my rights to point out they are without engaging further. If they want to be taken seriously, they have to at least indicate that they are willing to self-correct in the face of direct evidence that they are wrong.
    - S-E-P 9d ago
      > If someone is spreading deception, intentionally or not, then it's entirely within my rights to point out they are without engaging further. What is it with millennials and "rights"? It's a sincere question. People don't owe you anything and neither do you owe me anything, sure... so why do you demand another have a higher standard that you yourself hold to. I know you don't hold yourself to that standard because you would rather nitpick someone on a single inaccuracy then grapple with a very real issue (which you yourself would not appreciate if they did that to you). The respectable thing to do is to note the inaccuracy and approach the valid portion of the argument sincerely. What you demonstrate is a lack of care for those around you, and a lack of care for what is actually true. You would rather "umm actually" then treat others with an ounce of respect. It's shameful and devoid of grace.

gorjusborg 9d ago

And what are you basing that understanding on? https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-co... According to EESI (a bipartisan-founded non-profit), a large data center: > can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people. Also noting that AI datacenters can use more.

6031769 9d ago
Consume it how, exactly? Are the staff drinking it all? Because the the kit sure as hell isn't. :-/
- gorjusborg 9d ago
  From the article: > Approximately 80% of the water (typically freshwater) withdrawn by data centers evaporates, with the remaining water discharged to municipal wastewater facilities.
HedonicEscal8r 9d ago
Is that supposed be a lot? That article states that all US data centers combined consume 450 million gallons a day, equivalent to 90 towns, which does not sound like very much.
- gorjusborg 9d ago
  I'm not the one here making assertions, I'm asking questions of the person making claims. I'll leave it to others to judge what is 'a lot' or 'reasonable'. I don't think 'anyone who thinks X is Y' is a good basis for discussion, which is the real point.
preg_match 9d ago
This sounds like a lot, but it’s actually not very much. I mean, one singular almond requires 1,000 gallons of water. Beef requires shit ton, too. Go vegan for a few weeks and you’ve just negated all your AI water use for the rest of your lifetime.

phyzome 9d ago

You can always tell an AI apologist by how they latch onto the water thing and ignore the electricity, air pollution, noise pollution, etc.

daedrdev 9d ago
The electricity, air pollution and noise pollution are all from natural gas. Data centers aren’t loud, on site temporary natural gas turbines are. We can instead install solar and batteries and none of these will be issues. We already grow corn for fuel at 1/10th the land efficiency of solar so it’s not like we don’t have the land for it
- zahlman 9d ago
  I feel like there's a huge political/economic opportunity in the US simply from getting government to shift subsidies from corn/ethanol to solar. Of course you also have to get buy-in from the farmers, but.
- phyzome 9d ago
  I'm not talking about hypothetical possible futures in which people do the right thing. The datacenters that are being built right now and which are in operation right now use single-stage gas turbines, last I checked. HVAC equipment can also cause a lot of noise pollution all on its own.
scarmig 9d ago
You could, you know, stop spreading deception about water usage if it bothers you so much when people call out deception about water usage. At this point, I almost consider it trolling to bring it up: purposely throw in something incredibly stupid, and then throw a hissy fit when predictably called out on it.
- phyzome 9d ago
  I, personally, do not bring up the water thing. So you're talking to the wrong person here.