AI Data Centers in Texas Used 463 Million Gallons of Water, Residents Told to Take Shorter Showers
AI Data Centers in Texas Used 463 Million Gallons of Water, Residents Told to Take Shorter Showers - Techie + Gamers
According to a July 2025 investigation by The Austin Chronicle
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According to the Chronicle article
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“Once that water evaporates, it’s just gone,” Mace told The Austin Chronicle.
one of my journalism pet peeves - they don't link to that original source article, from only 4 days ago, but this entire article is basically just a rewrite / rewording of it. all of the sources quoted are from the Austin Chronicle, they don't seem to have done any original reporting.
and on the sidebar, the top link on "Editor's Picks" is "10 Most Successful Shark Tank Products" which is pretty obviously just an ad disguised as an article. so this "Techie Gamers" website seems like a pretty shitty clickbait farm.
Thank you for giving the Austin Chronicle credit where it's due. I'm a donor and love their paper. It's a free weekly that's the only print news really left in Austin, and they do great work. Also a great resource to find live shows around town
But, but, but ... the Statesman is still around! I see it on the rack at HEB, but it's a fucking shell. Unsurprising when you have a burgeoning union while changing hands twice in five years and the best solution was Cox. (N.B., I ran the GateHouse team that designed A360 ahead of the Gannett purchase from Cox.)
When you're getting better news on Kerrville from the UK than the AAS, well ...
Prob written by AI which is ironic given the subject.
The best part of this is they plan to irrigate crops with reclaimed fracking water!
Cue millions of Texans asking ChatGPT: "How can I take a shorter shower?"
Everytime I hear anything about these data centers it's something like this. They come into a community and fuck with the residents. They pollute the air, the water, they use up all the water, they cause noise pollution. It's absurd.
The worst thing is the majority of these aren’t like the AI your little brother uses when he logs into the chatgpt app. Like that contributes a little. But the real issue is that Tech companies have implimented LLMs literally everywhere in their workflows and data and services and this is taking up a ridiculous amount of computational power. These enterprise level implementations and speculative integrations (ie. adding AI somewhere that a corpo things will help but literally no one asked for it), is whats driving the biggest rise.
this is just a waste of resources. no one needs freaking AI. its crap bullshit. people need WATER stop being evil Microsoft!
is there a reason why this water isn't recycled?
“Once that water evaporates, it’s just gone,” Mace told The Austin Chronicle.
ok -- but why? Why not recapture it, cool it, and recycle it. Surely there are renewable energy sources, or ways of externally cooling the water with no energy at all that could be used for cooling as well.
That's a great way to create eco terrorists.
unlikely, thats why all these centers are in red states, in blue states they would be heavily regulated.
Ha! Joke's on them ... I've not taken a shower since June!
I'm doing my part!
aiiiiiii!!
Not all "water use" is the same. Agriculture returns it to environment through drainage into acquifiers and rain cycle, though the rain can fall outside of community. Showers go through sewage system, and treatment recycles it. Fracking destroys water by polluting and sequestering it. Data centers cooling requirements do not need any treatment before returning water back to community's clean water supply, afaiu, though certainly if treatment were needed, the data center should implement it.
We can/should be angry about datacenter electricity use if that makes electricity more scarce for the rest of us, and uses climate terrorist energy to do so. But water use should not be a problem. There would be a shower advisory anyway, without datacenter, afaik.
Article suggests that "evaporative cooling" means an open cooling cycle that releases steam. AFAIU, computer/data center cooling uses closed loops.
Ok I get that this is bad, but could we not use the data center as water heaters and distribute the hot water to households? This way the data center can offset some costs, and households would use less energy and money for heating.
could we not use the data center as water heaters and distribute the hot water to households?
is that technically possible? sure. it's called district heating. that wikipedia article mentions examples of it being used in the Roman empire, 14th century France, the 19th century US Naval Academy, and early 20th century MIT campus.
in practice...houses already have a "regular" water connection running to them. in order for this to be practical, you're talking about having to run plumbing for a 2nd hot water connection. to every house.
come up with an estimate for how much you think that would cost. then go look up the actual cost that Flint spent on replacing their primary water connection pipes. then go look at your estimate again.
when it's feasible, usually you see it on a college campus, or somewhere else with high population density and a centrally-located physical plant providing the hot water / steam.
we're talking about data centers in Texas here. they're probably in some warehouse district in exurban sprawl, and the homes you'd theoretically want to run the pipes to would all be detached single-family homes in suburbs miles away. hope your pipes are well-insulated.
in practice…houses already have a “regular” water connection running to them. in order for this to be practical, you’re talking about having to run plumbing for a 2nd hot water connection. to every house.
many places, get their heating from such a 2nd pipe carrying NG to their house. While water needs a bigger pipe, it is low pressure, and can be thinner using less metal (or plastic) overall.
AI data centers are also gobbling down massive amounts of electricity, stressing the grid, giving consumers higher bills for worse service. All for something that pretty much everyone hates.
Don't worry. Texas' grid is famous for its reliability.
That's pretty much Austin Energy's MO. Keep lowering rates for commercial and industrial while raising rates for residential. Texas in a nutshell.
I went off grid nearly two years ago, and AE has raised rates six times now. With pretty shitty uptime.
Do you have a source on this? Texas Gas Service is absolutely doing this, but Austin Energy's residential rates are really good compared to other utilities in the state, and really haven't ticked up much in recent years outside the $5 base rate increase in '23.
As far as uptime, outside the statewide winter storm outage in '21 and the ice storm in '23 that shredded power lines, I don't think I've experienced an outage in 10 years
where texas electricity bills can wildly fluctuate depending on where your getting it too.