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/
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u/TBradley 23h 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.

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u/Csusko 15h 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/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 12h 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.