- Data centers should do everything they can to reduce water usage.
That said, this is masterful scapegoating. The ag lobby must be gleeful if they're not directly responsible for this narrative.
In 2003 my middle school in Central Pennsylvania had this exact same problem. All our water fountains had to have signs posted stating that the water was not safe to drink. Many of my classmates had the purple-tinged skintone that is characteristic symptom of consuming the polluted water.
The issue stems from high input, fossil-fuel based farming, and most of society simply looks the other way because no one has figured out a cheaper way to produce enough food. Data centers are just a red herring.
by simianwords
2 subcomments
- This article is misleading. The data centers role here was to evaporate a tiny bit of already polluted water and increase the concentration of the pollutant.
The increase is estimated to be around .1% with reasonable assumptions.
The primary driver of pollution was agriculture but the data centers can be attributed to .1% at most. Is it a big deal? Not in my opinion.
by stingraycharles
4 subcomments
- Ok I don’t know a lot about water purification, but playing the devil’s advocate: isn’t it the responsibility of the water purifiers to get rid of nitrates and ensure the drinking water stays within legal limits?
Or is it somehow a very difficult / impossible process to do this?
- The comments here make you think about whether this is an issue or not. But, regardless, I wish that Amazon execs were literally shackled to their data centers. If they move to avoid taxation, like when Bezos moved to Florida, at least they would have to drag those data centers with them. If there truly are pollution issues, at least they can share that with their new neighbors. Bezos certainly seems to care about fitness, so if anyone can drag a data center that is shackled to his neck, it would be Bezos.
- Headline is very misleading. The article is saying the data center might be making an existing problem slightly worse, but it’s not the source of the underlying problem.
- I’m a dummy: why do data centers have to consume water again?
I have both computers and air conditioning and neither consume water.
I’m assuming of course that evaporation cooling is cheaper and consumes less energy than closed cycle cooling with a forced air heat sink.
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/data-c...
by palindome
2 subcomments
- This article states that wastewater from the center contains nitrates at 56 ppm, but the local wells are testing above 70 ppm. It also targets the vector of contamination as being from percolation to groundwater from water treatment plants, which I'm guessing only a fraction of wastewater has the ability to leak through.
This feels incredibly disingenuous, or at the least, incredibly poor journalism.
by hobbitstan
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by withinboredom
2 subcomments
- [flagged]
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