• iopq@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      How about they shouldn’t be allowed to do that? You can build data centers without breaking the law. They also don’t use that much water. They have been farming almonds in arid California areas for decades and nobody cared

    • dan@upvote.au
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      There’s definitely some negatives about data centers.

      However, there’s also a lot of misinformation. All the data centers in the entire USA use less than 1/20 of the water consumed by golf courses, and modern designs use closed-loop water cooling rather than the older evaporative cooling. Evaporative cooling is the type that uses a lot of water.

      I live in Silicon Valley, and most of the data centers here are in Santa Clara County. 65% of the water usage by data centers is recycled water.