r/technology • u/l0st1nP4r4d1ce • 1d ago

Business Improper redaction reveals Lincoln’s Google Data Center water and electricity usage

https://www.1011now.com/2026/09/30/more-questions-than-answers-about-lincolns-google-data-center-water-electricity-usage/
4.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

232 comments sorted by

1.2k

u/TBradley 22h ago

The six data centers reporting as of Sept. 30 show a total use of 765 million gallons of water last year, enough water to fill 1,159.93 Olympic-size swimming pools.  More improper redaction shows that the data center using the most water annually is Fireball Group LLC, the Google Data Center in Papillion. Fireball LLC reports 547.88 megagallons for their 2025 Annual Water Consumption.

Force them to upgrade Fireball to use less water for the sake of sane policy making. It is using twice as much water as the other 5 data centers combined. Very on point name though.

189

u/DirkNL 18h ago

Silly question but where does the water go? It’s used for cooling I presume? So it’s now warm water.. but not polluted in any way?

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u/NealoHills 18h ago

It’s evaporated away into the atmosphere. The process of evaporation pulls heat away

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u/RellenD 11h ago

Not all of it is evaporated away, there's still wastewater with bullshit in it

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u/fashionforward 10h ago

Don’t forget about the coolant runoff that has promoted toxic bacterial blooms in local watersheds.

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u/Evening-Scientist113 12h ago

Except for the pfas which remain and have to be discharged as wastewater "blowdown", ending up in local waterways because they're not effectively removed at treatment plants. I thought if they use certain coolants those discharge TFA in the droplets and come back down in rainfall?

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u/shizumuka 15h ago

Hmmm so.. it's like we built small compact "forests" but who create more Co2 not oxygen?

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u/Platypus81 14h ago

Forests also trap water and provide cooling. So not much like forests if we want to look at resource outcomes. But hey, we can make some top tier slop, let's see a forest do that.

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u/Brootal420 15h ago

Definitely much worse than that. An interesting thought, if we think about consequences, if all the water is being evaporated if there are unusually high precip storms that cause floods and kill people. You could make the connection back to the data center being at least somewhat responsible.

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u/FlametopFred 12h ago

tricky to do with a gutted EPA

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u/Brootal420 9h ago

Pretty sure the epa isn't even that woke yet

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u/DirkNL 15h ago

So it’s not used like regular liquid cooling in home pcs? They use giant vapor chambers basicly and just push the steam out into the atmosphere. That’s wild.

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u/travistravis 14h ago

They could do that but they choose not to because that would mean lower shareholder returns

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u/kentrak 9h ago

It's a common strategy for when you need lots of cooling at an industrial scale like this. Cooling towers of nuclear plants.

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u/8Deer-JaguarClaw 12h ago

Do they not use closed-loop recirculating cooling systems? There's evaporative losses even in a closed systems, but it's very minimal.

I know some of the newer datacenters do use these kinds of systems, because my company is bidding on the work.

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u/goblinm 11h ago

But how do they cool down the loop? Closed loop systems still need a way to reject the heat to the environment, and that doesn't preclude evaporative chillers

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u/Somethingclever24 11h ago

Air-cooled chillers are a thing.

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u/goblinm 11h ago

Yeah, my point is that closed loop doesn't preclude evaporative cooling

2

u/I_love_Bunda 5h ago

In some urban environments there are central steam plants, that generate and pump hot water for faucets and heating for buildings. Using the data center hot water for this could be an interesting proposition.

1

u/8Deer-JaguarClaw 7h ago

The water is pumped through the system where it passes around the hot portions (CPUs, GPUs, etc) and the heat transfers to the water. The warm water is then usually carried to something like a big radiator with fans blowing air across heat sink fins and the like. Then the cooled water is recirculated back through the system. You can do a web search for a more detailed explanation, but basically they all work in this general way.

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u/Serenity-V 13h ago

Could we at least use fog nets to catch the evaporated water to refill the aquifer?

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_MOMS_NAME 4h ago

Still not seeing how the water is polluted or being wasted. It will remain in the ecosystem

1

u/Kvlk2016 3h ago

It does, but that vapor might go really far away from your local ecosystem which is pretty bad if you are in the dry southwest…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bbe-Ev-Yns

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u/Zealousideal_Cow_341 14h ago

Idk where you are from, but if you’ve ever driven by a nuclear power plant like the one in north Ohio you’ll see that gigantic cloud looking thing above the big funny shaped tower. That’s a cooling tower that evaporates water to remove heat from the plant, and the cloud is steam. Data centers use the same process.

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u/pemb 18h ago

It evaporates.

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u/Nohreboh 17h ago

Which does not tend to fall as rain in the same area and does not refill aquifers at the same rate as above ground lakes which is what causes water shortages.

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u/myfufu 15h ago

Also water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas.

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u/S_A_N_D_ 15h ago

While that's true, I'm not sure there would be any meaningful impact on atmospheric water vapour. It would not even be a rounding error to what evaporates from the oceans on a daily basis. Focusing on that point only serves to water down (no pun intended) and misdirect from more pressing and poingnant criticisms.

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u/myfufu 15h ago

Fair enough, I'm just saying this cooling system has multiple overlapping negatives. Generate heat, drain aquifers, contribute to greenhouse gas..

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u/S_A_N_D_ 15h ago

You're not wrong. My point was that including the inconsequential makes it easy for detractors to paint you as uninformed or a fear mongerer that is exaggerating the harm, or simply a naysayer looking for any reason to argue against data centers. It serves to undercut your overall argument because it's not a meaningful criticism of data centers.

Keeping to the meaningful ones that have a genuine global or local impact makes your overall argument more robust because there are less things people can nitpick about to shift focus away from the meaningful. Including the whole "water is a greenhouse gas" is superfluous as it functionally will make no difference on a global scale, and you already have greenhouse gases covered by all the extra generators they run which will have both a local and global impact on air quality and has much more potential to contribute to the anyhropic impact we're having on our climate.

It's not truly a negative of evaporative cooling because the yearly amount of water added to the atmosphere from evaporative coolers is not even a rounding error for the daily amount that evaporates from the oceans. It's a negative on paper only because it will have no real world functional impact.

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u/SilverSageVII 10h ago

Actually we call that “waste heat” and there are laws about how hot things can get if you wanna put them back into the water supply. Basically the heat will destroy the river or lake long term if not handled properly. Lots of smart systems use this “waste heat” to power secondary systems.

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u/Csusko 14h ago

For reference, I am working with a chain of car washes on optimizing water usage.

This chain of washes has nearly 80 locations. Each location uses between 1 to 1.5 million gallons of clean water per month. That is after using water recovery out of the last stage for the first stage.

That is more than the data centers annual usage.

We as a society have a problem.

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u/JLRfan 9h ago

That’s bad, obviously, but it doesn’t make data centers use of 765 million per year good.

Like, “oh, well, at least it’s only as much as the total annual water usage 40 car washes” isn’t a selling point.

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u/SilenceoftheSamz 7h ago

Water is reusable. I really think the heat issue is bigger. Heat and adding to the power production and pollution Associated with generation and transmission.

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u/Csusko 6h ago

Oh I am not advocating for big tech. Just providing a point of reference.

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u/JLRfan 5h ago

The work you do sounds really cool. Lowering water consumption at a car wash, where the business is basically “spray water at car,” sounds like a boss-level challenge!

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u/Nimrod_Butts 12h ago

I don't think anybody cared about water usage prior to data centers. I've never heard anybody complain about water usage whenever a factory is built

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u/KiraUsagi 11h ago

I think the water usage bit stems from the companies building these data centers trying to jam them into every community they can. My county has been under sever drought for quite a few years now and along comes a data center trying to open just down the street. We managed to shut them down fast, but they where willing to try despite the fact that my neighborhoods is litterally restricted to watering grass no more than once a week.

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u/Csusko 11h ago

That is definitely not the case. Google search nestle for instance. As I mentioned, I work in the industry and trust me it is a major topic all over the nation. The primary complaint with data centers is the fast track approvals. It is a race to build and local govt officials are getting bought to push the process without community buy in.

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u/Nimrod_Butts 11h ago

The nestle stuff seems to be more focused on them buying water for cheap and reselling it, bus it not? I've never heard of anybody being upset at like a Ford plant using 400 million gallons annually or anything like that

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u/cscoffee10 10h ago

So you've just never lived in or read about areas that habitually go through drought conditions

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u/Nimrod_Butts 10h ago

Yeah I have, I've never heard of that being an argument against industry though.

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u/cscoffee10 10h ago

Sounds like willful ignorance on your part then. Golf courses, and certain agriculture growth(notably almonds) have faced consistent criticism for high water usage for decades. As for Nestlé, its cheap water contracts and then exceeding said water contracts illegally in a particularly dry and arid region to the point that theyve damn near depleted one of the primary springs used.

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u/DenseCod8975 7h ago

If it rains a lot and your reservoirs are close to full it’s not a problem imo..

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u/KidneylessRat 17h ago

Can I point out that megagallon feels weird? Is it 1mil × 1 gallon or 1gallon6?

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u/LegendEchidna 16h ago

It’s a million gallons

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_MOMS_NAME 4h ago

Mega sounds scarier than million

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u/mathologies 16h ago

Do you think a megawatt is watt⁶?

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u/KidneylessRat 16h ago edited 15h ago

That's a good point. I was thinking more in the sense of gallon isn't using the metric system. So it's base unit isn't 10. So, adding mega 106 is weird.

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u/sticklebat 14h ago

Mega is just a prefix that means “a million of”. In other words, it’s just 106 times the unit, regardless of the unit. There is no need for the unit to be metric.

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u/cansofgrease 7h ago

Unless we're talking about bytes.

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u/sticklebat 6h ago

Even then. Every relevant standards organization defines a megabyte as 106 bytes. Colloquially (and even in some fields), the older usage of convenience as 220 bytes is still common, even though that is now technically a mebibyte. I wish they’d chosen a name that didn’t sound so dumb for that, though.

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u/reflexive-polytope 16h ago

One gallon raised to the 6th power wouldn't even be a unit of volume.

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u/KidneylessRat 15h ago

Indeed. You are right. It was a silly question in the end. Like I said, it felt weird. I got weirded out by an unusual combo haha

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u/reflexive-polytope 15h ago

Happens to the best of us.

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u/DeProgrammer99 15h ago

What do they call volume in 18-dimensional space, anyway?

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u/reflexive-polytope 15h ago

18-volume. Or just volume, if we're doing pure mathematics and the ambient space is 18-dimensional (which isn't the case here).

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u/LambdaNuC 13h ago

You don't like running down to the grocery store and buying hyperdimensional milk?

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u/reflexive-polytope 12h ago

Unfortunately, my stomach is too flat for it. Pity.

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u/soylentblueispeople 16h ago

1 gal × 106 == 1 megagallon.

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u/live22morrow 15h ago

1 million gallons. Using the uncommon metric prefix.

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u/Glass_Librarian9019 16h ago

enough water to fill 1,159.93 Olympic-size swimming pools

The 6 data centers combined used less than 1,200 Olympic-size swimming pools in 2025? That really puts things in perspective.

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u/ItsPumpkinninny 15h ago

Yep... 765 million gallons for 6 data centers averages to ~130MG per site.

That's in the same ballpark as an 18-hole golf course which can use 100MG each year.

I say they should both be put on water rations.

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u/TBradley 15h ago

I do not think golf courses should be allowed to use the amount of water they do or at least there should be ever increasing costs per gallon as consumption continues to grow once you cross a threshold of maybe a million gallons, resetting every year.

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u/juggett 15h ago

Most golf courses in the Phoenix area use reclaimed water. Can the data centers do the same?

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u/VivaceConBrio 15h ago

Yes, they can, and many do. But they generally don't like to because it's more expensive to setup and maintain, so they usually only do it if local government forces them to.

The water has to be piped from a waste water treatment plant to start with. Then they usually have to do additional on-site treatment/filtering before it hits the data center's cooling system to reduce the damage it does to the cooling system (build up and corrosion are a huge problem in the quantities these places consume). Then there's a much larger cost in maintenance to fix all that damage being done overtime and increased risk of unplanned downtime/outages due to mechanical failure which really dings their income.

So like I said, they really would rather just suck the local water sources dry because it's cheaper and more convenient for them. The only time they choose the more environmentally friendly options are when local governments force their asses to do so. When you see the big 3 bragging about their new data centers doing the smart thing, you'll almost certainly find local legislation requiring it if you look deep enough.

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u/theapogee 12h ago

People in this thread are going to be devastated when they hear about golf courses.

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u/TheAsianTroll 13h ago

"B-but Almonds! Golf courses!"

-every AI defender.

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u/DenseCod8975 7h ago

That’s about 2350 acre feet of water .. not good in areas of drought

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u/WanderWut 6h ago

Context matters here, of course throwing out big numbers and comparisons of how many Olympic pools sounds dramatic (weird unit of measurement anyway?) but how does that compare to everything else? For example the amount of water entirety of all data centers in the U.S. use up in one year is just 3% of the water that golf courses will use in a single year.

It’s wild how data centers are being portrayed as the single greatest threat to the planet’s water supply when they’re a drop in the bucket compared to countless other things we consume without giving them a second thought. Nobody bats an eye when someone says they’re going golfing, despite golf courses being vastly more water-intensive, but mention using ChatGPT for a cake recipe and suddenly you’re being witch-hunted in the comments because apparently you’re personally responsible for making the planet run out of water.

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u/TrashOfOil 5h ago

Idk why golf courses are always used as an example when they use non-potable water, and the water is filtered back into the eco system through the subsurface…

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u/TBradley 5h ago

I think golf courses need to be charged water rates that make it financially difficult to justify using millions of gallons of water. This isn’t just data centers but they are problematic as much as golf courses and growing alfalfa in the desert.

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u/Gibraldi 22h ago

I get why but WHY the hell are they allowed to redact and hide this. It should be public record for any new build.

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u/Catch_ME 18h ago

I really think NDAs should not exist for public officials...there isn't a reason for them to keep anything secret except maybe national security on the federal level 

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u/Dan_Linder71 8h ago

This just in: "Administration officials now classify water, power, and all other infrastructure reports as a national security concern...."

Sigh...

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u/Everlast7 16h ago

Scroll down to the tax part - why are these data centers getting rebates?

Is there any revenue that the state actually gets from these leaches?

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u/FarewellAndroid 16h ago

The state? It’s been a long time since the state got any revenue. All the money goes to lobbies and funnels into the pockets of individuals

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u/thespiff 15h ago

Yeah real dumb. There’s no way these create enough jobs locally to justify local tax breaks.

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u/Street_Anxiety2907 15h ago

Google datacenter in Dallas has 13 employees

4 security guards
25 technicians
6 rackers

Occasionally electrical, HVAC or maintenance contractors get involved.

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u/jalmstead 15h ago

Isn’t that 35 jobs? That’s still shit, and not justification of the tax break, but I’m confused on the math.

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u/P1umbersCrack 14h ago

How did they get 13 employees with that math?

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u/TheRuckyDubber 14h ago

Well, see, what they meant was there’s 25 technicians, of which 4 are security guards and 6 are rackers. Take them away you get 15. Then you account for 2 on average being HVAC or electrical and that leaves you with…na, I got no idea how 13 could be 4+25+6, lol. However 1 and 3 are the same distance away from each other as 3 and 5 on a keyboard. Maybe that’s the situation here. That’s all I got. 

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u/Relevant_Election530 14h ago

13 Google employees along with f our contracted security guards, 25 co reacted security guards and six contracted rackers is my guess 

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u/SomethingAboutUsers 15h ago

What do you mean? They create at least one legislators' job, when they have to sign a form allowing the tax breaks for the big bag of cash they were given to do that. Is that not enough for you people?

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u/wackOverflow 11h ago

In this instance they’re taking advantage of the existing Nebraska Advantage Act.

Once rebates expire, data centers usually pay millions a year in property taxes.

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u/fatbob42 10h ago

Yes, they pay property taxes. It’s also relevant to see if they’re paying more tax than the previous use, which they almost certainly are.

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u/JoeSicko 15h ago

Because they are using the tax code in place now. That's why I keep saying we should be targeting all wasteful businesses, not just data centers.

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u/Migoth 22h ago

Please note, that the Agate datacenter isn't actually fully up and running yet, and still in the construction phase

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u/PlainSpader 21h ago

Isn’t this a crime?

“LLC is reporting 52.65 megawatts of electricity during peak electrical demand and 13.299 megagallons of water between cooling towers, evaporative systems and site operations in the last year. That totals out to 13 million gallons of water.
For context, 13 million gallons is enough to fill around 20 Olympic-size swimming pools, and is less than half of what the City of Lincoln reports using on Sept. 29.”

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u/jengert 18h ago

I believe you are viewing millions of gallons a day. The data center used 13 million gallons in 2025... If I'm reading this right.

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u/DoomBot5 17h ago

I fact they had a bigger daily swing in the last month's daily usage rates than this data center consumes in a year...

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u/GetMeASierraMist 12h ago

stating it like that is misleading, both numbers are ~13 million.

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u/WhereDidAllTheSnowGo 16h ago

You are correct

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u/0accountability 17h ago

Fireball data center used 547M gallons which is like 5 golf courses. Or 5000 homes.

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u/bendover912 16h ago

Golf courses and homes aren't evaporating the water, though. At least normal water use puts it back into the water table.

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u/dm80x86 16h ago

Well some of the water goes back to the water table, watering grass has evaporation and runoff losses.

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u/bendover912 9h ago

Yes, tell me how the evaporation loss of grass watering compares to evaporative cooling.

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u/dm80x86 8h ago

Better yet let's not farm lawn grass either.

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u/DoomBot5 4h ago

How is putting water in the atmosphere not put it back into the water table? Did you fail 7th grade science?

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u/NeitherEntry6125 15h ago

Why does cinnamon whiskey need a data center?

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u/3six5 23h ago

Tl;dr?

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u/Lucky_Locks 23h ago

"However, using a computer cursor to highlight the redacted text box in the report to DWEE, then copying and pasting it into a separate document reveals that Agate LLC is reporting 52.65 megawatts of electricity during peak electrical demand and 13.299 megagallons of water between cooling towers, evaporative systems and site operations in the last year. That totals out to 13 million gallons of water.

For context, 13 million gallons is enough to fill around 20 Olympic-size swimming pools, and is less than half of what the City of Lincoln reports using on Sept. 29."

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u/IronicAim 23h ago

Nice of you to cherry pick the part friendliest to goog.

Also data on other data centers, including one using 547mil gallons. And goog expecting 10s of millions back in tax returns for each data center LLC it's running them under.

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u/squidwardTalks 22h ago

Natural gas plants have the same problem. There are a couple proposed in Wisconsin which will use almost 800,000 gallons a day.

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u/IronicAim 21h ago

The fireball data center is using almost twice that on its own. And is that for each plant or all together?

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u/math-yoo 19h ago

Yeah but a power plant produces power. It has a useful output.

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u/Bananonomini 19h ago

It powers the data centre 🪄

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u/expressadmin 16h ago

I’m not on either side of this but one could argue that a data center also produces useful output.

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u/squidwardTalks 18h ago

That's each one.

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u/Cordulegaster 21h ago

So for those who would like to see normal measurements not swimming pools: 13 million US gallons is equal to about 49.2 million liters (or 49,210 cubic meters).

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u/LVDirtlawyer 20h ago

The average household uses between 0.3 and 0.5 acre-feet of water per year. 13 million gallons is almost 40 acre-feet. So this data center used the same amount of water as 120 single-family homes would in a full year. All 6 data centers used the same water that 7000+ households would. Lincoln, NE has around 122k households.

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u/Flyen 15h ago

Average yearly household usage around the world:

Nebraska, USA: 0.278 million liters, United Kingdom: 0.126 million liters, The Netherlands: 0.101 million liters, China: 0.104 million liters, India: 0.144 million liters, Sub-Saharan Africa: 0.064 million liters

So in household units, that's: Nebraska, USA: 7,114, United Kingdom: 22,983, The Netherlands: 28,671, China: 27,844, India: 20,110, Sub-Saharan Africa: 45,247

Thanks to Gemini for the translation

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u/Alundil 14h ago

The irony lol

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u/Cordulegaster 13h ago

Thanks for the chuckle.

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u/_makoccino_ 23h ago

A single data center using the equivalent of half an entire city's usage is a problem.

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u/Monomette 22h ago

That's half an entire city's daily use over the span of a whole year.

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u/ZeroSumClusterfuck 21h ago

True, but it should be noted that it's low because it's the usage for the Agate data center which isn't in full use yet. The Fireball data center listed in the same document uses 548 megagallons rather than 13, which is more of an issue.

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u/Monomette 11h ago

548 megagallons

To compare to another American city, that's about half of New York's daily water usage.

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u/Bored2001 22h ago

Pretty sure it's less than 1/730th. The yearly usage of the data center was half the daily usage of the city.

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u/scampiparameter 22h ago

This math miss is the kind of thing that really drives home that this backlash is about AI… not DCs.

Believing something without taking the time to verify that the thing you believe is factual.

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u/frddtwabrm04 22h ago

Thee is a solution to all this.

The data centers need to be open about what they doing. Simple! You know do studies n shit present it to the people vs ndaing everything.

Then people would not be out there making all kinds of wild claims.

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u/knightofterror 22h ago

Half of the city’s daily water usage in one year is extremely low for a data center. Did you read it incorrectly?

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u/Migoth 17h ago

I believe that the number is read correctly, which was also throwing me a bit off, but what they doesn't add in the context, is that the Agate datacenter isn't done being built yet, and as far as I can see, it is only a small subsection which came online some time during fall 2025.

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u/DogBarf00 16h ago

Daily construction activities are probably using a lot more water than the completed data center would.

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u/mr_mufuka 22h ago

I’d like to go back to not knowing what a fucking megagallon is. What are we doing to this planet?

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u/Hanzoku 16h ago

For a brief moment, extracting a lot of wealth for shareholders.

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u/O-parker 14h ago

Fools are fighting over oil while we run out of water 🤔

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u/Low-Temperature-6962 21h ago

Because it is only allegedly redacted data, there is no legally binding reason for that data to be accurate. Worse than no news is news that might be a complete fabrication.

There is no substitute for changing the law to require full public disclosure.

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u/UnusualDisturbance 19h ago

when you say allegedly redacted, what do you mean?

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u/Low-Temperature-6962 19h ago

That whatever figures were "discovered" should not be considered actual number because there are no legal consequences if they arent. The claim that it was "true data that was redacted" is alleged.

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u/UnusualDisturbance 19h ago

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) - Nebraska data centers are required to turn in an annual report to Nebraska’s Department of Water, Energy, and Environment, but some state statutes are preventing the public from seeing just how much electricity and water data centers are using.

The Google Data Center in Lincoln, named Agate LLC, claimed their electricity usage and water usage were trade secret information, citing Neb. Rev. State §§ 81-1527; 84-712.05 and NAC TITLE 115, CH. 2. In fact, Google did this for all three data centers, including their sites in Omaha and Papillion.

However, using a computer cursor to highlight the redacted text box in the report to DWEE, then copying and pasting it into a separate document reveals that Agate LLC is reporting 52.65 megawatts of electricity during peak electrical demand and 13.299 megagallons of water between cooling towers, evaporative systems and site operations in the last year. That totals out to 13 million gallons of water.

so this makes it sound like they got a hold of google's report to DWEE and found that the contents were still legible. idk america's rules, but can someone just access such a report?
assuming that the news didn't alter the things that they copied from the original, why would i distrust these numbers?

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u/Go_Gators_4Ever 15h ago

Geez, the tax rebates these bastards are getting are egregious.

Do they post how many permanent jobs they have created for local residents? And what the positions are and how much they are being paid?

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u/SmarmySmurf 18h ago

Ah yes, swimming pools and cities. Standard measures I completely understand now.

(Doesn't understand anything.)

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u/lukmcd 15h ago

Adding metric quantifiers to standard measurements does feel weird

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u/SpellingIsAhful 22h ago

But where does this where go? Is it just evaporating? Are they basically just cloud seeding at that point?

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u/LordOfRuinsOtherSelf 22h ago

They're taking it from public use and gone. Why no closed cooling loops? Ah yes it's just cheaper to turn the tap on and run it over the hot stuff and throw the how water away.

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u/q120 21h ago

Data center engineer here: It isn't cheaper to throw water away vs closed loop cooling.

You can either pay for the water once and let it cycle or keep paying.

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u/Bannonpants 19h ago

I think a lot of data centers are not even paying for water and electricity (which is why the usage amounts are being hidden) rate hikes to local communities cover the cost and the surrounding populations pay.

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u/q120 14h ago

This isn't true and I have no idea where this comes from at all. Data centers use the same utility feeds as any other business and pay for their usage, unless I suppose they made some deal with the city council, which to me screams corrupt council.

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u/tigger29900 18h ago

This is not true in my experience, they never get a full break on utilities and will always pay for consumption. The rate increase is normally driven by that increased consumption and more its impact on the grid itself

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u/Ok_Wasabi_8318 15h ago

So why even engineer one where water just keeps evaporating in the first place? In the pro-AI subreddits, everyone keeps saying data centers are closed loop now but this sounds to contradict that. 

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u/q120 14h ago

Older data centers with less power density are the ones that used the water-guzzling evaporator technology. Modern AI data centers' power density is way too high for air cooling to work, which is why they have switched to cooling right to the chip with water in a closed loop

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u/MasticatedTesticle 16h ago

Where does the heat go in a closed loop?

1

u/q120 14h ago

There are chillers that take the water outside and cool it with AC units essentially, then the water (which is usually glycol and water) returns to the servers

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u/MasticatedTesticle 13h ago

You mean an aircooled chiller?

1

u/q120 13h ago

Yep, they do use a lot of power but no water

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u/piponwa 20h ago

Gone?

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u/LordOfRuinsOtherSelf 20h ago

Well, either evaporation or the drain, either way, no longer part of the municipal supply.

2

u/q120 14h ago

Most AI data centers use a glycol and water mix that arrives from companies that produce it for this exact use:

https://thirdcoastchemicals.com/products/jeffcool-inhibited-glycols/isf-series-isf55-isf25/

The water doesn't even come from the local municipal supply

2

u/LordOfRuinsOtherSelf 14h ago

Interesting. So they buy and ship in the water ? How long does it last , because they're using a lot of water. Does it break down or something? Where is this glycol water mix coming from? Where does it go when they replace it with more?

2

u/q120 13h ago

The glycol should last years in a loop and when it needs to be replaced, it is generally put back into containers and shipped to a disposal company... I can't speak for all data centers, but that's how it works where I am

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u/Niceromancer 15h ago

Oh boy I can't wait to be told by the smug assholes over at r/datacenter how this is actually wrong and datacenters don't use a lot of water and this is all a fake movement.

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u/TheGreenHatDelegate 18h ago

Why don’t people throw the same tizzy for golf course water use? Added bonus are all the insecticide and fertilizer runoff. A single course uses about 120M gal/year - about 16k golf courses in the US.

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u/Djamalfna 17h ago

I've been throwing that tizzy for years, personally. 

People think I'm nuts though.

First thing I would ban if they made me a King is all forms of golf. Except mini golf. Mini golf can stay.

3

u/YossariansDead 16h ago

What about disc golf?

4

u/Bloody_buttplugs 16h ago

I will also be legalizing marijuana, so yes disc golf stays.

4

u/fisothemes 14h ago

Do they get tax breaks?

7

u/TheGreenHatDelegate 14h ago

Even better - many are municipal golf courses as well. Imagine the government straight using your tax dollars to build and support a data center. Not even a tax break, it’s a government subsidy.

3

u/Ok_Wasabi_8318 15h ago

People do. Also doesnt mean that just because there's already one thing that wastes water, we should keep adding things that waste water. 

Golf courses suck. They cater to the rich, which happens to be same group that is pushing for these dumb data centers. 

3

u/topperlopper99 10h ago

It demonstrates that people don’t actually care about water use. That’s the point.

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u/Bravojones33420 8h ago

They cater to the rich 🤣🤣🤣

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u/NotaContributi0n 12h ago

But you are doing that right now. Yes it’s really happening, here it is. Right here.

1

u/syn_vamp 6h ago

because "ai bad" = upvote right now.

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u/Infinite-Mark-6335 4h ago

I do. Golf courses are a terrible waste of land and resources compared to most other sports.

1

u/aerost0rm 48m ago

Might as well just include every business that waters three times a day, even during a drought and on days it rains.

2

u/Minimum-Reward3264 11h ago

Because water goes back to the ground. You, uneducated mob. Data center water gets evaporated and combined with AC contributes to the warming.

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u/TheGreenHatDelegate 11h ago

Surface watering has tremendous evaporation and runoff.

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u/syn_vamp 6h ago

gets evaporated

right because once that water is in the sky, it has no way to come back down. it's up there forever.

🤦

there's no way you're calling other people uneducated when you literally don't know how rain works.

1

u/RussianBotPatrol 1h ago

Are you under the assumption that the clouds produced by the vapor run offs from data centers are going to accumulate in that immediate vicinity and replenish the water it used up? I'm no cloud scientist but I feel like the answer is much more nuanced than that

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u/Deeppurp 9h ago

It goes back into the ground, somewhere else. And does not return to the environment in which it came from for a significant period of time.

It's why during water shortages, golf courses should be one of the first to be restricted.

1

u/AtomicBananaSplit 7h ago

I think part of it is that local people use the golf course, or brings in tourists that spend money. The vast majority of the data center usage has no benefit to the local community. No significant jobs, no injection of cash to the locals post build. 

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u/syn_vamp 6h ago

it's wild that you think fewer people utilize the capabilities produced by a datacenter than a golf course.

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u/Talusen 15h ago

In comparison: one ton of alfalfa uses approx 100,000 gallons (4 acre inches) of water to grow.

The water use of the data centers is equivalent to 7,650 tons of alfalfa.

https://waterquality.montana.edu/farm-ranch/irrigation/alfalfa/making_ton.html

Montana grew 3,080,000 tons of alfalfa in 2025

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=MONTANA

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u/MountNevermind 15h ago edited 15h ago

Or a whopping 5.6 percent of all the water used in Lincoln, Nebraska (the place we're talking about) every year. More than 1 out of every 20 gallons used on one thing that is NOT local human usage or even agricultural usage. Something it wasn't being used on before.

765 million / 13.7 billion

https://www.lincoln.ne.gov/files/sharedassets/public/v/12/ltu/utilities/water-system/water-quality-report.pdf

This in a place usually listed as moderate drought risk. They had above average rainfall in 2025, but overall trends as climate change continues does not improve things.

8

u/Talusen 15h ago

You are not wrong.

There is something really messed up about the way we distribute, use, and price water in the US.

5

u/Nexies 12h ago

Allowing private individuals to treat water like a commodity and buy up water rights for huge portions of states was a big mistake. Nestle owns a ton of the water rights for California and the owner doesn’t think drinking water access is a human right, its fucked

5

u/Hour_Wonder_9240 15h ago

The way we use water is braindead. Forget people's lawns and pool, those pale in comparison to industrial greed entrenched with cheap water

2

u/BroccoliSenior5465 12h ago

The bills here are increasing 2-5% until 2030 for power and water usage. People are getting railed by increasing property taxes (increased every year for over 16 years now) and now the increasing power bills.

Power went from an average of $195 to $260 at my place per month, and water went from $140 to $210 only a year after proposals

1

u/Xtrusio 19h ago

the black box was apparently just decorative. 😅

1

u/[deleted] 13h ago

[deleted]

1

u/bunchout 13h ago

You’re comparing yearly water usage for data centers to daily for humans. 765 million gallons is the water used by 26,301 people in a year.

1

u/williamgman 12h ago

Just like when they uncovered some redacted data in the Epstein Files because they used Abobe's blackout. Bet they won't make that mistake again. I think the usage was like a third of the whole area.

1

u/rightiswrong- 12h ago

How many evaporative cooling towers do they have at that facility?

1

u/amenflurries 6h ago

At this point, how are the tech companies not the horseman, famine

1

u/UpsetPhilosopher6022 6h ago

Capitalism is the cancer.

I used to wonder what the great filter could possibly be.