The company commissioned an independent groundwater study to investigate Morris’s concerns. According to the report, its data center operation did “not adversely affect groundwater conditions in the area”.
I’ve lived with well water. You must filter it and test it regularly because it changes. It can also go dry.
I have to filter the local water too because it’s very hard and tastes like crap. Hilariously the filter will eventually start to grow algae
I have to filter the local water too because it’s very hard and tastes like crap. Hilariously the filter will eventually start to grow algae
algae isn’t about water quality, but sun. You either don’t change your filter frequently or your place has a nice exposure to sun (or both, of course)
They have no laws to protect their water?
Or is this one of the things that Trump/Musk have destroyed?
“Our goal is that by 2030, we’ll be putting more water back into the watersheds and communities where we’re operating data centres, than we’re taking out,” says Will Hewes, global water stewardship lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS), which runs more data centres than any other company globally.
How can this possibly make sense? Mine owner says, “by 2030 we’ll be putting more gold into the ground than we’re taking out!” I can only assume this is some carbon credits style of nonsense.
I really hope what they mean is clean water.
It can happen; there’s a paper mill by me that was actually an important part of the river cleanup process when the river was far worse than it is today. It takes water from the river, uses it for their needs, then treats it and returns it to the river far far cleaner than they took it out, which has been a net benefit for the entire downstream river ecosystem. That plan, and their follow-through, is the only reason that mill exists at all.
Thing is, where are they going to find this not-particularly-clean water to treat and return? Are they going to need all new infrastructure built to accommodate this?
And why is that cheaper/easier/whatever than just making a closed loop cooling system, which they could have done from the being…
Intel was lauded for this same thing in the early 2000s at the fab I worked at, since ultrapure water (literal H2O) was required to rinse the chip wafers the water going out was cleaner than going in.
I’m still not entirely sure why these data centers require such massive amounts of water when we’ve been running heat exchange loops in nuclear plants for decades.
I’m still not entirely sure why these data centers require such massive amounts of water when we’ve been running heat exchange loops in nuclear plants for decades.
Because many are running evaporative cooling.
They use adiabatic coolers to minimize electrical cost for cooling and maximize cooling capacity. The water isn’t directly used as the cooling fluid. It’s just used to provide evaporative cooling to boost the efficiency of a conventional refrigeration system. I also suspect that many of them are starting to switch to CO2 based refrigeration systems which heavily benefit from adiabatic gas coolers due to the low critical temp of CO2. Without an adiabatic cooler the efficiency of a CO2 based system starts dropping heavily when the ambient temp gets much above 80F.
They could acheive the same results without using water, however their refrigeration systems would need larger gas coolers which would increase their electricity usage.
The article isn’t clear about the mechanism by which the data center is supposedly affecting the woman’s well. Is the data center using well water, depleting the supply of ground water in the area? Or is the claim that the construction disturbed the geology enough to cause problems with flow and sediment in a well 366 meters away? Does anyone know or have theories?
He takes us to a creek downhill from a new construction site for a data centre being built by US firm Quality Technology Services (QTS).
George Dietz, a local volunteer, scoops up a sample of the water into a clear plastic bag. It’s cloudy and brown.
Well, maybe they didn’t have proper sediment control but a creek is a lot different than well water. Most people don’t drink out of creeks, sediment control is done more for the purpose of protecting fish habitat.
Hauls buckets of water to flush her toilet
What? You’re concern is sediment in your well water and then go haul dirty brown sediment filled water from the creek to flush your toilet instead?
Buy a sediment filter for your well water. Even people not beside giant data centres should have one just because it keeps the system functional and running better. It is practically a requirement to have one.
