A data center used 29 million gallons of water without a bill, while residents complained about low water pressure

[Endymio]

Two things that I need to understand better... 1. Why do they need to use that much water? Can't they close the loop and recirculate the water? They can have a large enough reservoir of water so that it can cool mostly on its own. 2. What happens to the water after they are done with it. They aren't really doing anything to it to contaminate it are they?

If they're using an open-loop system, then the water is being evaporated into the air, where it will eventually return as rainfall.

One thing rarely pointed out in these articles is that the sites which use thse open-loop systems exist almost entirely in areas where water is cheap and plentiful. When water is scarce and thus expensive, normal economics forces them into closed-loop systems .. and an increasing number of them do such (I believe the latest figure is 75%+ of new sites under construction are closed-loop cooled.)

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

Two things that I need to understand better... 1. Why do they need to use that much water? Can't they close the loop and recirculate the water? They can have a large enough reservoir of water so that it can cool mostly on its own. 2. What happens to the water after they are done with it. They aren't really doing anything to it to contaminate it are they?

With closed loop systems, you still have to cool the water somehow and that usually involves circulating the water underground (since the ground is cool and infinite heatsink). That means a lot of digging and probably more power needed to pump the water operationally (but I'm not sure about that last part).

In addition, the water mentioned by the article was used for construction, not for running a data center.

 

[Gravitytr1]

The mistakes are always in favor of the rich.

And simultaneously, the rich never deserve any penalties and there's always an excuse for them but not for the avg Joe.

Funny how that always works

 

[Q Wales]

In the UK, we spend a small fortune on gas to heat our water, if we could get a hot feed into our housing and use preheated water from these data centers we could make something positive from this.

 

[Endymio]

The mistakes are always in favor of the rich.

This isn't even remotely true. The mistakes are nearly always in favor of the poor ... but no journalists choose to write stories about those. For instance, in the US alone, nearly 20 million families receive free or heavily discounted water service and other utilities -- while the rich pay full price ... and usually wind up heavily subsidizing local water service, through the rapacious property taxes they pay.

 

[Barff498]

This comes down to your cities infrastructure and your leaders not doing their job for you. They knew what is going on and should have been checking each step of construction and utilities. I watched this same thing with our city airport not having rate increases over 10 years for industrial sites. When it finally came to light they slowly raised the price per gallon and then they hit the citizens of the town with a rate increase a year later. This is your city government, and you need to ask questions of elected officials and get them at public meetings, on camera, in the paper, so all citizens know what is going on. Ask them again when they want your vote as why things like this happen. It's your city, county and state and they should be serving you.

 

[Endymio]

This comes down to your cities infrastructure and your leaders not doing their job for you.

Cities that don't have a commercial and industrial base turn into little rural towns. These have lower quality water service and higher rates, as they must amortize fixed plant and compliance costs across a much smaller base. Your city leaders are working for you by understanding the economic principles that their constituents fail to comprehend.
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