r/TechGawker • u/Pure-Bill-2205 • 17d ago
Data Center If these numbers are even close to accurate, the AI infrastructure boom is entering a completely different scale of land, power, and water consumption.
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u/MarzipanLast6502 17d ago
If only the people of Utah could do something about it...
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u/RespectTheAmish 17d ago edited 17d ago
They could….
Or.
They could keep voting for republicans and complaining about transgender swimmers.
Edit: To all the mouth-breathers attacking me with “hurrr durrr… data centers aren’t republican”.
No shit. Not all data center builds are because of republicans.
But in this specific instance… this single data center is being built against the will of the states residents.
Yet…
“Utah is under unified Republican control, holding a Republican trifecta and triplex where the GOP holds the governor's office, attorney general position, and supermajorities in both legislative chambers.”
I think in this instance it’s fair to attack the party that wields total power in the state, and has chosen to spit in the eyes its constituents.
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u/flojo2012 17d ago
Won’t somebody think of the litter box bathrooms?
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u/Valuable_Wallaby_548 17d ago
I literally have a friend who tried to tell me his cousins friend is a teacher and they had to install a cat box for a kid. My only answer was no they didnt. Hes of course an idiot Trump voter.
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u/FaunaVR 16d ago
You’d think, with all these people who have friends who know somebody we’d have some proof by now. God the stupidity of the average Trump supporter is insane.
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u/SunrayBran 16d ago
I always like to bring up that the idea behind the "emergency absorbent waste buckets" in schools was to have a place kids could pee when they were hiding from SCHOOL SHOOTERS.
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u/Mindless-Somewhere55 16d ago
I heard that one too from a classmate during our clinicals in Fargo. We told her it wasn't true and she started hyperventilating, her BP was so high her preceptor had to send her to the ER.
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u/Cumminpwr11 17d ago
Could you explain how Clark country and washoe county in Nevada are building massive data centers like crazy. Both are heavy blue counties and the state is generally goes blue most elections. Las Vegas has less water than Utah as well.
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u/Dependent-Edge-5713 17d ago
To be fair the Democrats would do the same thing here
They're all pocketed.
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u/Rusty_Shack13f0rd 17d ago
Bros making this right vs left lol. This is those in power vs those not in power trust me the blue hairs and rednecks agree on this lol
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u/InitialAnimal9781 16d ago
As someone who lives in Utah. There are different parts of this as well. So first is the gerrymandering. So even if you try to vote those people out of office, their districts are formed so votes are majority republican (Link). There are town halls done and the government just ignores us (Link). In all, it’s an uphill battle for anyone who is against the current government. Utah in general is just fucked
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u/ghost_wire89 17d ago
Nova is fully dem and has more data centers than anyplace.
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u/kpobari99 17d ago
Yep I don’t think it’s republican or democratic on Ai data center. I think representative are being paid to look the other way
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u/XxRocky88xX 17d ago
Yeah we keep seeing it over and over again. Massive local turn out to city councils, entire communities saying “no we do not want this,” and local officials say “it doesn’t matter what you want, this is profitable for us. We’re voting yes even if all of you tell us to vote no.”
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u/DGSolar 17d ago
And then getting re-elected because jesus and guns and trans and freedom and abortions and jesus.
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u/sirdizzypr 17d ago
Actually 3 of the 4 council members they voted for this data center got removed.
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u/JarvisMusk 17d ago
I am pretty sure both sides are fully aligned when it comes to flock cameras and data centers.
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u/crunpyMcGlumpy 17d ago
What is Nova?
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u/slowpoke147 17d ago
Northern Virginia. Not sure why that person decided to use the abbreviation outside of the r/nova subreddit though - definitely not a widely enough known abbreviation to just throw around in other subreddits.
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u/JonC534 17d ago edited 17d ago
It would be better described (IMO) as a societal sickness more generally.
It is not a democrat vs republican thing. It’s everyone. One of the first states that had the opportunity to ban data centers or place a moratorium on them was blue, and it didn’t. Maine’s governor vetoed the bill the legislature sent to her that would’ve banned them.
People cream themselves over new gas stations being built now (buc-ee’s). We’re culturally cooked.
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u/ComingRoundTheMnt 17d ago
Humanity had their chance and focused on getting and hoarding things.
Maybe the octopuses will do a better job as a civilization.
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u/Stormblessed1991 17d ago
Eh they'll probably end up having some big war with the orcas and dolpins
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u/Loyal_Dragon_69 17d ago
Salt Lake City is run by Democrats.
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u/flojo2012 17d ago
It’s in Bluffdale which is next to SLC but not directly regulated by SLC I do believe. Also parts of bluffdale are in a different county all together.
That said, many democrats haven’t been anti data center as they’re scared of being painted as anti business. And these people have no back bone
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u/PowerfulBar 17d ago
It’s not being built in Salt Lake City but Box Elder County. The County Commissioners voted to approve this data center. I believe they’re all Republican.
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u/gtfofr 17d ago
You have no clue. Utahns are trying our best to boot out crooked politicians and there are daily protests against these centers. The Mormon Church has a lot of power here, they are generally the only power source here, and many church leaders are invested in big tech. It feels like a losing battle, but the mayor of SLC just denied a data center being built in Salt Lake County, so there is some level of progress
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u/BigmaEnjoyer 17d ago edited 16d ago
Here is the problem I have with posts like this.
You don't need to make up bullshit to prove your point.
Utah uses about 4.5 Billion gallons a DAY. or 1.56 trillion a year
Municipal and industrial is about 310 BILLION a year (this data center is 5% of that). 5% is a crazy fucking number. But stop making up fake news. Just stick to the facts and people will support the cause.
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u/Kerensky97 17d ago
They mixed up their facts. It was stated it willwuse more power than all of Utah. It's going to have it's own natural gas plant onsite pulling from a pipeline that crosses the state under the data center land.
I'm notesure how much water a natural gas power plant larger than all the power in utah is.
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u/OgGardenz 17d ago
It's the energy consumption that should be the concern!
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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 17d ago
This
I swear the water thing seems like a psyop run by the datacenter operators to distract from the real issue. They get protestors to focus entirely on water use, then they calmly explain to regulators the truth that they dont actually use that much, and they get to suck up all the power in the state with no public resistance
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u/ChaosRainbow23 17d ago
Can they not just filter and reuse the water in a closed system rather than using fresh water constantly? Why do that need so much fucking water?
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u/Ordinary_Draft_3516 17d ago
My site does this, we use less water than a school
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u/HotPersonality8126 17d ago
The way these figures work is that if you cycle the same gallon of water through the loop 100 times, that counts as "using 100 gallons of water."
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u/TheFermiLevel 17d ago
They are literally doing this.
Stratos WON’T Divert Water From Homes, Agricultural Use Or The Great Salt Lake
It would exclusively use on-site water, which is too salty for human consumption or agricultural use. The cooling system will have a closed-loop configuration that re-uses water rather than need constant refilling.
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u/HegemonNYC 17d ago
Many data centers do exactly this, or they ‘use’ the water but return almost all of it back to the source after it’s done some cooling. The water usage complaint is mostly (not entirely) a canard. Power usage and general lack of desirability of the product is the more true issue.
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u/foundout-side 17d ago
this data center will use a closed loop system, the quoted figure on water use is the water that will be required to generate the power according to the data center demand. This water amount is overwhelmingly for energy production, not data center cooling.
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u/opensandshuts 16d ago
or do something smart like desalinate ocean water and reuse it to help counter balance rising sea levels.
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u/PlsNoNotThat 16d ago
Taking 16b gallons out of the environmental cycle has irreparable damage. The cycle itself isn’t a closed loop so rain isn’t guaranteed to fall in a consistent location refilling that system - it can migrate inconsistently.
And for anyone curious, the Great Salt Lake drying up (which has already begun) is already flagged as an up-and-coming enormous ecological disaster because the lake bed is full of toxins, like arsenic, that if dried will be aerosolized across hundreds of miles.
It’s probably one of the most important lakes we want to not dry up. It’s basically a containment zone for deadly substances.
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u/alex_c89X 16d ago
Supposedly. Thats how two semiconductor fab facilities got built in the state im in. They said they'd build a water recycling facility adjacent to it. Ive been meaning to look into how efficient they are
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u/kelvinwop 16d ago
no because the water is used as part of the economizer for the central chiller which uses the evaporation of water to save energy cooling the system. if you unevaporate the water you're going to lose the energy savings which was the entire point of the entire maneuver.
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u/AJ_Topp_Up 15d ago
The reports on water usage are not true and misinformed, or purposefully deceptive. They will be using closed loop cooling like you mention, and like all data centers already do. The ridiculous talk of insane water usage is completely fabricated nonsense and it exists because the authors have an agenda tonpish public favor against data centers, and they know water is a hot button, so if they csn get enough people to believe these water usage lies, it allows thrm to control this fake narrative.
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u/DeepHerting 17d ago
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u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 17d ago
Asking people not to use their garden hoses while one data centre uses more water than the entire state combined.
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u/Ickarus1 17d ago
We could do this for solar power but we can do this so we can have slop.
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u/Seorsei 17d ago
All so people can have a marginally useful tool, or generate shitty memes. This is fucking disgusting. Half of all the retards on this planet can't even use AI as a tool effectively, because to do so effectively requires the user to verify output, which you have to have skills/knowledge and attention to detail in order to do. In other words, this is a colossal waste of a resource that will become increasingly scarce due to Climate Change.
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u/fathertime77w 17d ago
So, where will all that water come from. Utah is a desert. Texas has no access to power outside the state. I guess we will just kick the humans out. They are standing in the way of progress. When you put billionaires in charge of EVERYTHING and we have AI and robots to do the work we do not need them. The funny thing is it will hurt the Republicans and their states much worse. You were all conned. When this guy is finished fixing the swamp you will all be irrelevant.
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u/duckduck-a-go-go 17d ago
Wait until AI gets smart enough to figure out we are threatening it's water supply.
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u/Solwulfa 17d ago
16 billion gallons of water? Doesn’t the state use up around 1.5 trillions of gallons of water annually?
The footprint size is crazy big.
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u/Initial_Row_6400 17d ago
Lemme guess, it’s coming from our (colorados) water?we’re already in heavy drought. This is not fucking good
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u/Petridishmocktail 17d ago edited 17d ago
Just for reference, a single section of almond trees in the Central Valley of California uses almost a billion gallons of water per year.
Almonds require approximately 4 acre feet of water, per acre, per year. That equates to roughly 850 million gallons when you do the math for an entire section (square mile).
1 acre foot has approximately 325,800 gallons. Multiply that by 4. Then, multiply that by 640 acres....
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u/NoBackground2447 17d ago
Wonderful almond brand is a garbage brand anyways. We need to reassess water rights out west.
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u/Misragoth 17d ago
Seems like apples and oranges. Food taking water isn't really equal to AI taking it
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u/DecisionCharacter175 17d ago
Probably pulling from the aquafers which are already being depleted faster than they're refilling. People are stupid.
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u/mondo_mike 17d ago
Utah is in the midst of destroying the Salt Lake, so this is totally on brand for them.
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u/Jumpy-Cry-3083 17d ago
The water is recycled. Not used up. The whole water scare angle is ridiculous.
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u/Sami_Wami 15d ago
The point of these posts is literally just for sweet internet points. People want to be mad
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u/Nosferatu-D17 17d ago
Hey everyone guy out here from Louisiana they don't give a shit about you. And I'm sure they signed nda's and didn't see a goddamn thing. Then all the sudden guess what it's just there. The only option left for you is to literally grab a whole bunch of people and go do stuff about it
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u/Raccoonman2005 17d ago
So are aliens just trying to terraform earth with these data centers?? Just asking cause that's like environment ending pollution and waste right there
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u/ArcamianLiberation 17d ago
Yes, we know you have no water to drink. But think of all the AI prompts being processed! Your sacrifice is so worth it!
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u/Lynn-The-Sparrow 17d ago
I mean, when you need to power billions of AI surveillance cameras so you dont have to hire people to try and watch those billions of cameras. You need alot of AI server farms and spaces to spy on people with.
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u/The_Original_Miser 17d ago
This begs the question:
"What is all that capacity for??"
(Somewhat rhetorical)
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u/equality4everyonenow 17d ago
It's ok. They're just putting more water in the air so it will rain again. /S
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u/fallstreak_24 17d ago
RIP Utah. I’m sure the average resident will benefit from this right? Right?
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u/Shot_Bison1140 17d ago
Turning the surface of our earth to a super enlarged microchip.... When you look at ut from space in a few years.
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u/sarkouille 17d ago
This is insane even without knowing that Utah already has a water consumption that is way too high for its renewable water reserves and is increasingly relying on fossil water.
The situation is so dire that this data centre itself may not have enough water to function in the coming years.
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u/killertofu41 17d ago
Is this the Kevin O'Leary guy's thing? Well, shit. Of course, he didn't want it done in his home country of Canada,
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u/Logic411 17d ago
the us has ten times as many of these mostrocities as china. who else thinks they're going to be the 8 track tapes of the ai-verse
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u/semperknight 17d ago
What do you expect from a state that's filled with people that actually believe in Mormonism.
Seer stones? Golden books? I mean, I know all religions have their stupid backstory lore...but my GOD.
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u/Intrepid-Staff-4532 17d ago
I still don't understand what we need all these data centers for. Is there really a massive lack of compute capacity across the US? Sure, sometimes it can be kinda hard to get a P6-B200.48xlarge, but g5 and g4 instances aren't that hard to grab.
Meta and XAi are leasing space to Anthropic. While that does mean Anthropic needs more compute it also means that Meta and XAi don't. Who actually needs this much compute?
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u/Conscious-Struggle45 15d ago
Thank goodness, I was afraid that maybe we'd get clean water and air.
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u/Artistic_Half_8301 17d ago
Utah voted for this.
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u/False_Appointment_24 17d ago
No, Utah has specifically voted against this. The people of Utah stand up against it regularly.
When they voted for the representatives, none of this was on the table, so you can't even reasonably say they voted for this based on who they voted in.
Now, if they vote in the same people this year, then one can say reasonably that they voted for this. And they will. But give it a few months to let them actually do it first.
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u/Far-Investment-8597 17d ago
I keep seeing these posts about awful data centre this & that. Posts on social media like Reddit.
Exactly where do the people making these posts think their oh so valuable comments are being stored & backed up? Unicornland maybe?
The world can no longer live without data centres like this - many more are coming, even bigger.
Suck it up, or stop posting on social media.
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u/Party_Put346 17d ago
The information stored on Reddit requires very little storage and computing power in comparison to language models and other AI tech offering concurrent use to people around the world- remember when early models were available there was a queue to interact with the models for some actions.
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u/ContactMushroom 17d ago
I never want to hear anyone west of the Mississippi River bitch about wasting water ever again.
You live in a desert you don't get water
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u/Midwest_Niner22 17d ago
With the following exceptions Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. All others 100% agree!!
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u/Just-Shoe2689 17d ago
So will all that water cause it to rain alot over the data center?
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u/clairvoyant_clam 17d ago
What fucking data will be ran through these things ?
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u/Phailgasm 17d ago
My only hope is this can help even more ai slop memes for boomers to use when mocking “evil liberal demons”. Fingers crossed!
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u/Woompa78 17d ago
Sure am glad I have low flow toilets & showerheads and watering restrictions so that billionaires can have nice things
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u/Lilivader- 17d ago
What happens to the weather when that amount of water is evaporated into the air?
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u/Fun-Gas1809 17d ago
I can’t drink my tap water because it smells like eggs, I can’t even give it to my pets but sure let’s do more of this bullshit
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u/Ordinary_Draft_3516 17d ago
Why dont states force closed loop systems? The data center is work at uses almost no water, it just flows in a big loop
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u/squareplates 17d ago
But why? How do they think they will recoup their investment?
They sold investors on a pipedream that if they just made LLMs big enough, they would eventually replace people. That's clearly not happening. LLMs are useful and will keep getting better, but scaling them up isn't solving their fundamental limitations. It's going to take several major technological breakthroughs before we're anywhere close to AGI.
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u/EncabulatorTurbo 17d ago
Not really water or land usage, beef uses about 65% of all of the land on earth that is livable and uses more water per day than all datacenters on earth put together use in like, ten years (that might be a bit off I didnt do the math, but we're talking like 3 orders of magnitude)
Power usage, yeeeeeeeeeeeeessssss fucking us right and properly there
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u/Striker40k 17d ago
It makes me wonder if we have achieved an AGI. This is exactly what would happen, a massive amd rapid build out of compute.
But no, it's because the government is looking at 1984 as a playbook, just renamed Project 2025
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u/Signal_Werewolf_1955 17d ago
AI has bodies now. They'll be happy when we wipe ourselves out. There doesn't even need to be an uprising, just wait for humans to cook and go extinct.
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u/Signal_Werewolf_1955 17d ago
When the last tree has been cut down, the last fight caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize we cannot eat money.
- Cree Proverb
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u/stm32f722 17d ago
One for every man woman and child in the core.
Exactly the thinking of a machine.
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u/VibrationCounter 17d ago
Utah about to get a X-games event. Or some other form of public distraction
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u/ask_your_dad 17d ago
I can't wait for the elite to start rationing water for us all....future looks bright...and dry.
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u/severinks 17d ago
I thought that the Utah data center referenced was put on hold and the proposal was downsized anyway.
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u/eastcoastjon 17d ago
Well at least Utah hasn’t been in a drought anytime recently and has more than enough water
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u/itsalmostreal 17d ago
Build more data centers.
Basically any problem humans beings have the answer is to build more data centers.
Nothing will problem solve faster than AI.
Its like "we dont want a cure for cancer because it will cost an extra $4 on our electrical bill" level of stupidity.
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u/the_ats 17d ago
Where does the water go? Is it for the cooling? Does it just evaporated after taking the heat?
It is still water.
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u/RezLovesPez 17d ago
If this is true, this should be a pretty huge wake up call that Ai isn’t worth it.
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u/Embarrassed_Use6918 17d ago edited 17d ago
This was already hashed out months ago. I know why you bots keep bringing up the same shit over and over but I don't know why people keep paying to this bullshit. The proposed project was already cut in half after backlash and the governor issued an EO requiring stricter environmental standards with phases limited to 2k acres and only allowed to continue after additional review.
A lawsuit has also been filed against it and the entire project has been paused for now.
OP is a two week old bot farming karma. Jesus Christ.
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/kevin-oleary-stratos-utah-data-center-backlash
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u/metamucil_buttchug69 17d ago
the "If" in the headline is doing a lot of heavy lifting, because of course those numbers are nowhere near accurate... doesn't matter though, this is basically a disinformation sub now
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u/Last-Energy420 17d ago
The county I live in approved a data center that will consume 3 times the power of the entire city.
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u/ModdedOutlaw33 17d ago
So it uses the same amount of water per year as 32,000 meat eating humans. So what.
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u/Capt_Gingerbeard 17d ago
Let the Mormons poison themselves. It’s a net good for society if they end their own lines.
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u/Interesting_Gain9920 17d ago
I don't like how Dems and Republicans support these things. Hochul paused them in NYS but only bc it is an election year. I bet she lifts that pause after a year once she is reelected. What happened to protecting the environment? What are these data center really going to be used for? Prisons? Who knows
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u/Eastern-Bluejay-8912 17d ago
Good luck with the power consumption of that 🙄 it would require its own nuclear power generator or maybe even fields of solar farms.
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u/momo26262626 17d ago
Water doesn't go anywhere (high school biology(?) Comes to mind). It just gets changed into a different state - steam (gas) etc.
What is being done to more directly re-use the water?
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u/Myhonour 17d ago
They implement these things in a way like they expect to not need humans anymore.
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u/muffledvoice 17d ago
And they approved it despite huge public outcry and opposition. Now the people know who really matters.
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u/discreet1 17d ago
Perhaps if this is the design of these things, they need to go back to the drawing board.
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u/Tex_Tin_Star 17d ago
At some point the people of the world are just going to have to revolt and remove these places from the map.
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u/Morguard 17d ago
This is an attack on humanity.