water issue(s)
rf...@sonic.net
https://www.aol.com/news/amid-data-center-boom-california-100000187.html (cut & paste)
Excerpt:
"...Much of the nation’s data center construction boom is taking place in arid states, including California, Arizona and Texas, where strains on water have been mounting amid dry conditions and rising temperatures.
The ongoing water shortage on the Colorado River, where reservoirs are approaching critically low levels, is expected to force additional reductions in water use in the Southwest in the coming years....".
"Global water resources are under growing pressure from an increasingly 'erratic' hydrological cycle, the UN meteorological agency has said, with two-thirds of all river basins suffering from abnormal conditions last year...".
-Financial Times, Sept. 19, 2025
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The Overlords are moving quickly to build water-intensive data centers. Likely that their influence upon politicians will be greater than that of voters. Even though they are smart, extremely wealthy and (thus) entitled, they cannot manufacture water.
rf...@sonic.net
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-ab93-data-facilities-water-use/
Excerpt: "...Water runs through the machines to keep them cool, and how much they use isn't public information..."
(Since it "isn't public information," it must then be proprietary - another example of corporate power over non-corporate lives. It's merely water after all.)
rf...@sonic.net
Let the betting begin: will it be tech mega-corporations or the public interest that will prevail? Can't recall who first observed that we can neither drink nor eat money, not even stablecoins.
rf...@sonic.net
sauteed stablecoin with a side of fava beans goes down easy they say
rf...@sonic.net
New Mexico will soon host a massive new data center backed by Oracle and OpenAI. Known as Project Jupiter, it was approved September 19 by the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners in a 4–1 vote. The “hyperscale” complex will be located just north of the Santa Teresa port of entry, less than 10 miles from El Paso, Texas.
The complex will be part of Project Stargate, the companies’ initiative to build a series of data centers for AI with a combined capacity 10 gigawatts. If Project Jupiter is built to its planned capacity of 700 to 900 megawatts, it would exceed Nevada’s Citadel, currently the highest-capacity data center in the United States.
Locals learned of the $165 billion project just one month before the county approved it. During the debate before the vote, proponents touted the project as a major opportunity for economic development, while opponents raised concerns about its water and energy use, as well as the rushed approval process.
From 2017 to 2024, the number of data centers in the U.S. increased from 318 to 5,208. These complexes are notorious for their high water and energy consumption, and New Mexico’s resources are already strained. So where will the water for Project Jupiter come from?
https://www.theborderchronicle.com/p/as-ai-data-centers-target-the-water?publication_id=373432&post_id=175492077&isFreemail=true&r=5f9foq&triedRedirect=true
rf...@sonic.net
California cracks down on water theft but spares data centers from disclosing how much they use
“Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed legislation that would have required data centers to report how much water they use. New data centers have been rapidly proliferating in California and other western states as the rise of artificial intelligence and growing investments in cloud computing drive a construction boom. The centers, full of equipment, generate lots of heat and can use large quantities of water to cool their servers and interiors. Many companies don’t reveal how much they use. Assembly Bill 93, introduced by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo), would have required new data centers to disclose their expected water use when they apply for a business license and would have required all to report their water consumption annually. In a message explaining his decision Saturday, Newsom said the widespread adoption of AI “is driving an unprecedented demand for data center capacity throughout the nation.” … ” Read more from the LA Times. (paywalled, sorry)
rf...@sonic.net
Protest against data center construction in Arizona makes news in the UK...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/15/tucson-arizona-ai-data-center-project-blue (req. cut/paste)
rf...@sonic.net
rf...@sonic.net
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Amazon and other socially-concerned corporations of its size may be working on ways to allow sentient life to efficiently consume money instead of water, with the goal of alleviating any possible conflicts of interest, however slight.
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Source: The Guardian
Sat 25 Oct 2025 06.00 EDT
Last modified on Sat 25 Oct 2025 11.09 EDT
Amazon strategised about keeping the public in the dark over the true extent of its datacentres’ water use, a leaked internal document reveals. The biggest owner of datacentres in the world, Amazon dwarfs competitors Microsoft and Google and is planning a huge increase in capacity as part of a push into artificial intelligence. The Seattle firm operates hundreds of active facilities, with many more in development despite concerns over how much water is being used to cool their vast arrays of circuitry.
Amazon defends its approach and has taken steps to manage how efficient its water use is, but it has faced criticism over transparency. Microsoft and Google regularly publish figures for their water consumption, but Amazon has never publicly disclosed how much water its server farms consume.
When designing a campaign for water efficiency, the company’s cloud computing division chose to account for only a smaller water usage figure that does not include all the ways its datacentres use water so as to minimise the risk to its reputation, according to a leaked memo seen by SourceMaterial and the Guardian.
Amazon as a whole consumed 105bn gallons of water in total in 2021, as much as 958,000 US households, which would make for a city bigger than San Francisco, according to the memo.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/25/amazon-datacentres-water-use-disclosure
rf...@sonic.net
https://grist.org/sponsored/the-wests-new-gold-rush-is-the-data-center-boom/
We are told that the rush to build new data centers around the US is predicated upon the putative need to create and host AI operations.
Those shielded by "the corporate veil" (legal term of art) will probably not be adversely affected when potable water supplies are dangerously drawn down by data centers, and greenhouse gas emissions increased by their reliance on also-greater requisite amounts of electricity. Through its deeply-entrenched use of the internet, the public is by degree necessarily/conveniently complicit.
However the scenarios play out, the public will have little or no weigh-in on whether data centers are literally necessary to any corporation or person who is not directly profiting from their construction and operation.
Would suggest as a possible if not entirely related exemplar the existence of the self-driving vehicle, i.e., is AI literally essential to society(ies) or does it more likely emanate from the boundless hubris and wealth attached to its progenitors that do not mind putting at risk the safety/survival of millions?
rf...@sonic.net
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-8TDOFqkQA
Exposing The Dark Side of America's AI Data Center Explosion
Posted by "Business Insider."