this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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The 2022 estimate for how much water was used in Texas in total was 15.2 million acre-feet, or approximately 5 trillion gallons. So these AI centers are accounting for 0.00926% of Texas' water use.
The issue is not the statewide consumption. The Texas water grid is not one unified system. It's a patchwork of local aquifers, municipal supplies, and private wells.
If a datacenter is built in an area with a water grid that can not handle its consumption, people will run out of water sooner or later.
(Especially AI) Datacenters are built in areas with low energy costs, as it is their biggest expense, with no regard for the local water levels:
- https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-centers-water-data/
So charge them more for the water. The data center builders are making rational decisions based on their costs.
Charging more does not create more water...
Of course not. But it changes the economics that causes things like data centers to be built there.
Water laws are often times asinine on a large scale. Depending on where the center is it'd probably be easier to run them out of town or otherwise cut off the water through sabotage than to increase the price of water.