this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
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What does it mean to consume water? Like it's used to cool something and then put back in a river? Or it evaporates? It's not like it can be used in some irrecoverable way right?
I kind of wondered the same thing in the past, but the other day I read an LA Times article that illustrated the extent of the problem of water loss (not particularly related to data centers although we know they contribute to it). The main problem with evaporating water seems to be that it was water that we could have used which ended up in the ocean instead.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-09-03/global-drying-groundwater-depletion
I infer that evaporation is worse than flushing it down the drain, so to speak, because if it were flushed you would at least be able to treat and recover much of it using much less energy than recovering it from the ocean. So it sounds like evaporation is largely (but obviously not completely) a one-way street, especially in arid regions, since only a tiny portion of the evaporated water would come back there as rain.
if they take the water and don't return to the source, there will be less available water in the water body, and it can lead to scarcity. If they take it and return, but at a higher temperature, or along with pollutants, it can impact the life in the water body. If they treat the water before returning, to be closest to the original properties, there will be little impact, but it means using more energy and resources for the treatment
"using" water tends to mean that it needs to be processed to be usable again. you "use" water by drinking it, or showering, or boiling pasta too.
I think the point is that it evaporates and may return as rain, which is overwhelmingly acid rain or filled with microplastics or otherwise just gets dirty and needs to be cleaned or purified again.
They need to use very pure water, and it evaporates completely, so it must be continually replenished.
Need is a strong word. There are much more efficient ways to cool data centers. They've just chosen the most wasteful way because it's the cheapest (for them).
To be clear: I’m saying that an ongoing supply of pure water is a requirement of the cooling method they chose, not that they were required to choose that method. The poster I was replying to asked how water could actually be consumed and not just reused.