FWIW, as a Washington resident, I can say that we're not exactly a state worrying about water shortages. We're probably one of the more reasonable places to build data centers due to cheap green energy and pretty plentiful water. Obviously, we need to manage it responsibly, but I haven't seen any evidence of looming issues here (please feel free to correct me, though).
Except we are.
> We're probably one of the more reasonable places to build data centers due to cheap green energy and pretty plentiful water.
Most of our water comes from snowpack that melts over the spring and summer. Almost every year for the last several years, snowpack has been abnormal and has affected downstream flows.
https://ecology.wa.gov/water-shorelines/water-supply/water-a...
https://www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.com/www.plantmaps.co...
https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/november-2021/snowpack-washingto...
And datacenter construction has put a major strain on central Washington power and water supplies: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/pow...
I agree the lack of source in TFA is less than ideal, and the author is essentially saying "just trust the professor bro".
But you have to admit it's ironic your claim has the same problem, essentially "just trust me bro".
Why shouldn't it? The thoughts and opinions of high schoolers matter just as much as those of adults.
But...it's not purporting to be an opinion piece. It seems intended to be a factual news article.
If this was an opinion column, I'd almost be more inclined to give it a pass.
You’re right that WA is a reasonable place relative to alternatives, and data center water use is a rounding error next to agriculture, but the strain is real at the municipal infrastructure level in the specific towns hosting these facilities.
The PUE penalty is typically +0.1 to +0.4, so roughly 10-25% more energy for a hyperscaler currently at PUE ~1.1.
Microsoft announced all new builds from late 2027 onward will use zero water for cooling via closed-loop liquid cooling, which suggests the economics have already tipped for new construction.
I wish it was easy to force issues like this into ballot measures. The citizenry should be able to rip control out of the hands of their representatives when so motivated.
Annualized, that is 0.0001% of the water used to produce subsidized corn ethanol. If we can afford to waste that much water on corn ethanol subsidies then we can definitely afford the water for data centers.
HB 2125 was killed by the Democrats because it was a deeply unserious bill unrelated to this. For example, it required data centers to turn off their power during ordinary periods of high electricity usage. Because, you know, we can just randomly turn off the Internet during the day and there will be no bad consequences.
AWS expanded recycled water use to 120+ facilities by late 2025, Google’s Douglas County GA site has used 100% recycled municipal wastewater for cooling since 2008, and Microsoft built a $31M water reuse utility in Quincy WA that cut their potable water use by 97%.
The main technical challenges are higher mineral loads causing scaling on heat exchange surfaces and increased Legionella risk from biofilm formation, but these are well-understood treatment problems with roughly a 6-year payback on the additional infrastructure.
You could in principle design systems with enough fouling mitigations that you'd be fine, but its likely that the cost of those mitigations is roughly the same as just purifying the water up-front.
