The neighbors of a data center in Georgia are steaming after they discovered the facility had sucked up nearly 30 million gallons of water — without initially paying for it.
A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/georgia-data-centers-water-00909988
25 Comments
reddig33@lemmy.world · 123 pts · 88d
deleted
kaidenshi@lemmy.world · 80 pts · 88d
Exactly. If I modified my water meter to hide my usage, or tapped my neighbor’s pipes, I’d go to jail. This data center needs to be shut down and the owners investigated and charged with felonies.
plateee@piefed.social · 28 pts · 88d
Yeah, but you see you're not cooling millions of dollars of GPUs so someone can make AI generated tits or cheat on homework. That's a public service!
/s
Fredselfish@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 88d
Bullshit the utility knew. I worked in the water industry. No way the corporation took 30 million gallons of water without their knowledge. Totally Bullshit! They knew, just paid to turn a blind eye.
s38b35M5@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 88d
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz · 53 pts · 88d
One of the more "out there" arguments I've read in recent times was a guy arguing basically that data centers don't make water go away because of the water cycle. That water can't really be destroyed. It made me feel the same way as when people respond to the killing of the earth with "The earth isn't going anywhere. It'll still be here and in a couple million years it will be fine." Fucking psychos.
ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -27 pts · 88d
I hate to tell you, but he was right. That's what closed loop systems do. IDK about this particular story, it sounds like they were open loop. But you should be able to recycle water indefinitely once it's filled and working.
how_we_burned@lemmy.zip · 29 pts · 88d
Yeah the thing about the closed loop systems is that they pump a shit ton of chems to kill anything in the water. However no matter what shit grows in the loop. So they end up flushing the loop and dumping the water and chems into the sewer, before repeating the process.
So no, closes loop DCs aren't great.
And i literally work in one. Just the other week the DC manager told me they had a leak. A stupid amount of water was lost.
But because water is so cheap for commercial metro users it was more a oops then a wake up. Bare min repairs and bam, back up and running.
The point is these "closed" systems aren't perfect and shit happens. Especially as they age out.
queermunist@lemmy.ml · 21 pts · 88d
That's only if the system doesn't use evaporative cooling, which most of them do since it requires a lot more cooling infrastructure to not rely on evaporation. Instead of the water evaporating in the cooling tower it'd have to sit for much longer in a cooling tank to allow the heat to radiate away, and that's a very slow process.
platform9469@lemmy.ml · 17 pts · 88d
Are you a bot? Or just a paid shill? You can just do a miniscule amount of searching to find closed loop systems are extremely rare in America due to the costs. Its much easier to just steal and polute potable water
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz · 16 pts · 88d
Le sigh.
ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -24 pts · 88d
Sorry we're all so much stupider than you and that no other systems exist to cool datacenters than the one you happen to have read about that time.
platform9469@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 88d
Oh so you are just doing propaganda while being a smug prick. Correct. You are much stupider. Just because technologies EXIST doesn't mean they are widely in use. Its obvious you're pushing an agenda, one that will poison drinking water for humans, so I'm guessing you're just a bot
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 88d
30 MILLION gallons??? Jesus fuck! Burn every one of them!!!
damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 88d
Please don’t burn them. Firefighters will then spend good amount of time, water, and foam to put out the fire.
Defund them, ban them, discourage companies from building them, turn off the existing ones. But do not burn them.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 88d
Can we like collectively burn one for fun? We've got to have enough other pyros to make it worth it
thesohoriots@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 87d
We can put on one heck of a Norwegian black metal show.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 87d
only if it can have some portuguese influences, i kill on the claves
jj4211@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 88d
We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn...
Drusas@fedia.io · 22 pts · 88d
They should have had their permits revoked and been forced to shut down.
regedit@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 88d
We can't get the judicial to arrest literal child fuckers. It's laughable to believe they'd care about water being stolen by the same people.
pHr34kY@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 88d
Personally, I would have just "fixed" the problem by turning it off without notice. Then arrest whoever comes to turn it back on.
homes@piefed.world · 13 pts · 88d
so... it wasn't "unnoticed"....
I hate these shitty headlines, like
same thing here. the press lies to push the same bullshit
melsaskca@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 88d
We need to get rid of all of the data centers to save humanity. Who woulda thunk?
CaptDust@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 88d
phoenixz@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 88d
You sure do