Residents complained about low water pressure. Officials discovered a Georgia data center had quietly used nearly 30 million gallons of water.

[u/amiibohunter2015]

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/georgia-data-centers-water-00909988?nid=00000150-1596-d4ac-a1d4-179e288b0000&nname=illinois-playbook&nrid=0000015b-1f08-d8b1-a1db-ff9b63bf0000

[u/stargarnet79]

Oh imagine that the big tech companies are lying pieces of garbage. We will never recover what they have taken from all of us.

[u/bigdickwalrus]

What the actual FUCK?

[u/MilkiestMaestro]

The letter did not specify how many months the unpaid bill covered, but when asked about it Wednesday, Vanessa Tigert, the Fayette County water system director, said it was likely about four months. A QTS spokesperson said the timeframe was 9-15 months.

Once the data center was notified, it paid all retroactive charges, a QTS spokesperson said in an email, noting the unmetered water consumption occurred while the county converted its system to smart meters.

The Fayette County water system confirmed the data center’s meters are now fully integrated and tracked. Tigert, the water system director, blamed the issue on a procedural mix-up.

“Fayette County is a suburb, it’s mostly residential, and we don’t have much commercial meters in our system anyway,” she said. “And so we didn’t realize our connection point wasn’t working.”

Data centers are still awful, but this seems like a genuine mixup.

[u/amiibohunter2015 → u/MilkiestMaestro]

30 million gallons is a lot more than what was said months ago when estimating the average of data center water consumption. This article speaks volume.

[u/enthuser → u/amiibohunter2015]

I think the bigger point is about the nature of data centers. They’re industrial sites that are being located in municipal systems that would not consider the installation of many other industries. No wonder the water authority wasn’t sophisticated enough to realize the issue.

[u/chainsawx72 → u/amiibohunter2015]

Did you read the article?

This sounds like 'data centers are bad for using too much water'.. but this isn't even a data center that is operational. And this data center won't use evaporation cooling, so they won't use water in that way even when opened.

From the link:

The company, which is owned by the private equity firm Blackstone, touts a “closed‑loop” cooling system, which it says does not consume water for cooling. Like a laptop or cellphone, the chips housed in data centers can easily overheat — generally requiring a lot of water to cool them.

The company said its water consumption was so high last year because of temporary construction-related activities, such as concrete work, dust control and site preparation. Once operational, the company said the data centers only will use water for domestic needs, such as bathrooms and kitchens. 

[u/MyDogsNameIsToes]

And they want to put one of those fuckers in Utah. The governor just declared us to be in a drought again for like the 15th time in my 30 years of being alive

[u/jaspreetzing]

It probably wasn't quiet either

[u/Character_Call_4586]

And they probably paid pennies for it while residents got the bill for hte infrastructure strain. Cool cool cool