this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Water consumption has been way overblown. Sure if you're in the Colorado River basin, water is absolutely an issue. But if your concerned with wasted water usage, all data centers combined would be a rounding error compared to what we throw away on turf grass.
Kyle Hill and Hank Green have both made videos about this I'm not crazy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx7ToT0G0qo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
I'll watch these after work, but surely the problem is not availability of water, but drinking water, which is another story? Data centers aim for clean water sources which can be used for drinking. Turf grass don't need that which makes the comparison seem unfair
I live in California and am required to water a lawn as a renter with my drinking water. Turf grass may not need drinking water, but I'd guess the portion of water used for grass that is recycled is not particularly high.
You may also be surprised about what makes water "drinking water". There's a water project in San Diego that is aiming to close the water loop by purifying all wastewater using RO and UV, to the point that it is lab-quality pure water. It's illegal to add minerals to it and pump it into the municipal water supply. They have to discharge it into a river first and let it have a certain "residence time" in an open air reservoir. The water we drink here isn't much more than lake water, and far less clean than the water that can be made by recycling wastewater.
It just depends on the location.
Some areas have water shortages where resources are already strained and other areas have abundant water so that no amount of usage will make a dent.
It not that it isn't a problem at all, it's just it is only a problem in specific places and not an inherent issue with datacenters everywhere. Building datacenters in a desert would cause water issues, building them near the great lakes wouldn't impact water availability in the slightest.
They do prefer drinking water, because it's already treated and so the equipment/maintenance to use it is lower and they can just evaporate it away. In other areas, or if required by legislation, they could run coolant to the machines and then cool the coolant using dirtier sources (including seawater).