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Amazon data centers used 2.5bn gallons of water in 2025 (www.datacenterdynamics.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 25 points 3 months ago (9 children)

AFAIK most datacenters use evaporative cooling so water simply evaporate and system has to be filled up again, other systems that are dumping water have issue with all kind of additives like anti corrosion, residual etc and water shouldn't be just dumped but go through wastewater treatment

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Yeah and I have little confidence the proper treatment will happen always.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Well it doesn't because obviously it cost money, just recently there was a scandal with Musk collosus datacenter where they straight dumping toxic wastewater into neighborhood, because well, water treatment centre they've planned is too expensive

    www.thecooldown.com/green-business/xai-water-recycling-facility-memphis-indefinitely-paused/

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Depends on how you define a data center, but you mean the large single purpose data centers that have been hastily built investor bait over the last 5-8 years, then yes, most of those use the evaporative cooling towers that concentrate waste products either already in the water, or added to prevent corrosion because they cheaped out on the plumbing, and then dumps that back into the local water source.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Fair. You are probably correct about dumping into waterways. But I know that a substantial amount of warm water is dumped into local wastewater processing.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago*

    Yeah as far as I was able to find out even closed loop systems have to be regularly bleed out to control mineral buildup. People argue about closed loop systems as it's some kind of perpetum moblie you fill it up and it lasts forever which is not true, that's why they don't use coolants either because none of that lasts forever, they're just saving a lot of money by being able to dump toxic wastewater without immediate ecological disaster

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    Is that supposed to be a positive? Those local plants have capacity, and they are meant to serve the needs of the community who finances said plants through their taxes.

    It's not ok to just dump billions of additional gallons (for no real benefit) into those existing systems.

    They should be required to build and maintain their own treatment plants, at the very least.

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