Not just water, but also resources: electricity, RAM and Flash memory, other things being over-consumed by the AI development explosion. This war doesn’t have geographic or national boundaries, its the (heavily funded) AI companies vs everyone else.
Not just water, but also resources: electricity, RAM and Flash memory, other things being over-consumed by the AI development explosion. This war doesn’t have geographic or national boundaries, its the (heavily funded) AI companies vs everyone else.
Don’t shame them, let them fly their flags proudly - makes 'em easier to spot.
Now, I’ll agree that datacenters don’t have to use water at all (but they do, to save money), and I’ll agree that their water use is overblown in many cases, but that’s no comfort at all when it hits your community:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/georgia-data-centers-water-00909988
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2193937991360483
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuMuxbrIwxc
Water availability and quality is one thing that gets people to wake up and take action: war.
It’s never percentages. It’s always the big flashy numbers in these articles.
If the datacenter usage is a rounding error compared to agriculture then efficiency of agriculture is the actual problem. Not the data center usage
The efficiency of agricultural use of water has been an actual problem since forever. Knew a guy who ran a Tilapia farm outside of San Antonio, TX - secured all the legal water rights, was encouraged by the Dept. of Agriculture to develop the project with all kinds of tax breaks, ran successfully for a few years then a drought came and the city of San Antonio realized this guy’s fish farm was using more water from their aquifer than the whole city. They bought him out / shut it down imminent domain style…