# I don't understand the relationship between data centers and water use **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 16, 2026, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737 "2026-01-16T05:30:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2026, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/41 "2026-03-01T01:09:21Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > I’m sure someone has thought of this, but can the heat be repurposed to do useful work? Could you put a data center next to a large building and pipe the heat over there for winter heating or hot water use? The search term for further reading is “waste heat recovery”. And the short answer you’ll often hear is “Carnot’s a bitch.” The heat is extremely poor quality. While you _can_ use it for district heating, it’s expensive even if it’s ~free. I know some folks were working on using it for direct air capture in places where there’s a need for CO2 (e.g. Permian Basin) but I suspect the funding for that became scarce a bit over a year ago. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2026, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/42 "2026-03-04T06:37:35Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Or if you mean just that they make some noise that people can hear? There is a reason that houses near the airport cost so much less. The effect of noise on the human nervous system is well researched and documented. If you paid premium prices for a house in the suburbs away from all that, don’t you think you’d have a right to be upset when someone decided to build a datacenter nearby? Do you think you’d have a right to compensation if they built ANY business that significantly lowered your property value? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2026, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/43 "2026-03-04T13:03:41Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > There is a reason that houses near the airport cost so much less. Jets taking off are far over 100 decibels while the supposed noise from data centers is like 65. And remember that decibels are logarithmic so that difference is much bigger than it already appears. > [@TruCelt](#): > > If you paid premium prices for a house in the suburbs away from all that, don’t you think you’d have a right to be upset when someone decided to build a datacenter nearby? Of course I’d be _upset_, much as I would be if a building I owned became rent controlled, or if zoning changes allowed more sense housing units to be built in the area, or any of a number of other things that would impact the property value. > [@TruCelt](#): > > Do you think you’d have a right to compensation if they built ANY business that significantly lowered your property value? That’s a very different question. Do I have a right to compensation if I own a building that becomes rent controlled? No, of course not. Same with a data center. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2026, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/44 "2026-03-04T13:18:07Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > She also commented that the currently planned and funded data centers already on paper would require **several** new nuclear power plants for sufficient power generation within 2 years. So the water loss for many agricultural and ranching communities is an immediate and community ending concern (major political rant omitted), but even if water were as endless as some believe it to be, there is just no way for Texas to generate the power for all these data centers. Which can lead to the datacenters running illegal power generators on site: AFAICT, power use is a much bigger issue than water use, even when water use is important. In my state, the power utility is seeking a massive increase in residential power rates to cover the infrastructure cost needed to build out for anticipated data centers. I am super duper uncool with my being forced to subsidize these speculative corporations, so they can create additional pollution so that people can ask ChatGPT to design logos for their businesses. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/45 "2026-03-05T01:08:48Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Do I have a right to compensation if I own a building that becomes rent controlled? That is a very special case. They only do it with buildings that have been paid off and more than adequate profit has been gleaned by the owner. A poor comparison to a family with a mortgage on what will be their only major asset. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/46 "2026-03-05T01:11:30Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I am super duper uncool with my being forced to subsidize these speculative corporations, And so that they can take our jobs. That’s what the building boom is really about. I should pay for the infrastructure they need to do that? No thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/47 "2026-03-05T01:24:42Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > That is a very special case. > [@TruCelt](#): > > A poor comparison to a family with a mortgage on what will be their only major asset. I also listed other examples, for example zoning being changed in the neighborhood where my single family home I owe a mortgage on which is my only major asset is located, allowing multifamily buildings to be built and driving down my property values. Should I be compensated? > [@TruCelt](#): > > They only do it with buildings that have been paid off and more than adequate profit has been gleaned by the owner. That claim appears to be incorrect, do you have a cite for the assertion that only buildings that are paid off where the owner has made “more than adequate profit” are subject to rent control? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/48 "2026-03-05T01:29:59Z")
If multi-family housing is now being built on your street, doesn’t that _increase_ the value of your single-family house, since now the land is so much more valuable for the development possibilities? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/49 "2026-03-05T01:32:58Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > If multi-family housing is now being built on your street, doesn’t that _increase_ the value of your single-family house, since now the land is so much more valuable for the development possibilities?. Not necessarily, but I guess in some circumstances, so let’s say it’s the next street over where the zoning change ends, so you have all the negative impacts of being adjacent to higher density without the benefits of selling your lot to a developer. But really there’s no point torturing the analogy. My point is simply that no, I don’t think you deserve compensation just because your property value dropped because someone else did something on their property. Or even if the city made changes to your own property’s legal designation.. ---
**Author:** ![Ancient\_Nerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed655f/32.png) [@Ancient\_Nerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ancient_Nerd)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/50 "2026-03-05T08:13:13Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > Once the water is installed into the system, why would the water be _consumed_? Why can’t it be recycled pretty much endlessly? Any liquid cooled electronics that I have ever seen does use a closed loop like that. The water is pumped through something with fins to exchange the heat with air. This could be complaints from people who do not know what they are talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/51 "2026-03-05T13:50:37Z")
> [@Ancient\_Nerd](#): > > Any liquid cooled electronics that I have ever seen does use a closed loop like that. None of which were data centers. > [@Ancient\_Nerd](#): > > This could be complaints from people who do not know what they are talking about. Or it could be complaints from people drawing from readily available sources instead of . Google straight up states in their annual environmental report that the increase in its water use is “primarily due to water cooling needs at our data centers.” > **[2024 Environmental Report](https://sustainability.google/reports/google-2024-environmental-report/)** > > Google’s 2024 Environmental Report provides an overview of our environmental sustainability strategy, including our targets and annual progress towards them. This report features information from our 2023 fiscal year (January 1 to December 31, 2023).... Here’s an old article about a request for groundwater withdrawals for cooling: > **[Google permit to triple its freshwater use upsets S.C. neighbors](https://www.selc.org/news/google-permit-to-triple-its-freshwater-use-upsets-sc-neighbors/)** > > A request from internet giant Google to siphon up to 1.5 million gallons of water per day from a Berkeley County aquifer that provides drinking water has upset neighbors and lawmakers who are urging South Carolina officials to reconsider the permit.... Whether the complaints are justified or not isn’t something I’m going to get into in FQ, but the water use is real. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/52 "2026-03-05T14:19:14Z")
> [@Ancient\_Nerd](#): > > Any liquid cooled electronics that I have ever seen does use a closed loop like that. The water is pumped through something with fins to exchange the heat with air. This could be complaints from people who do not know what they are talking about. Right. But I believe they system has to be periodically flushed using chemicals. > [@TruCelt](#): > > But there are real problems when they try to take up space in suburbs. Primarily noise and electrical grid related. They take up huge amounts of space, and for some reason these companies always want to put them in the suburbs instead of in rural communities. Then they demand enormous tax benefits, saying they are going to add thousands of jobs. But the jobs are only there while the place is being built. Once it’s up and running, the number of employees is just not enough to balance the tax breaks. > > They just don’t give anything back to the local community, and they are a drain on infrastructure which the community must pay to maintain. Yea, I’m definitely in agreement with you here. With most brick-n-mortar industries, it’s easy to see a direct benefit to the local community. Data centers, OTOH, seem to be exploitative; they take, but do not give. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/53 "2026-03-05T15:59:21Z")
> [@Ancient\_Nerd](#): > > Any liquid cooled electronics that I have ever seen does use a closed loop like that. The water is pumped through something with fins to exchange the heat with air. This could be complaints from people who do not know what they are talking about. Your experience is probably with souped-up gamer rig computers. Things are a little different when you’re dealing with entire rooms full of racks of servers, where you have to cool the entire room as well as each individual computer. @md-2000 pointed out what difference the scale makes, and why it’s very tempting to use evaporative cooling rather than radiative: > [@md-2000](#): > > The problem with lossless cooling is that without the boost from evaporation, the system would need much bigger radiators to blow air through (like a car); unless they sat on a large cool body of water (hence, oceans, big rivers). ---
**Author:** ![Ancient\_Nerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed655f/32.png) [@Ancient\_Nerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ancient_Nerd)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/54 "2026-03-05T20:15:10Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > Your experience is probably with souped-up gamer rig computers. Semiconductor equipment actually. There are managers out there who are crazy and ignorant enough to come up with such an idea. One of those could avoid thinking about how to chill the cooling water by just ordering that it be open loop. It could happen but, misinformation along the line somewhere seems possible also. ---
**Author:** ![Ancient\_Nerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed655f/32.png) [@Ancient\_Nerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ancient_Nerd)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/55 "2026-03-05T21:02:14Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > [Google permit to triple its freshwater use upsets S.C. neighbors - Southern Environmental Law Center](https://www.selc.org/news/google-permit-to-triple-its-freshwater-use-upsets-sc-neighbors/) 1.5 million gallons/day is about what 1000 residential households would use. It does seem like a lot. This data center is probably multiple large buildings full of electronics. Pushing back seems reasonable. Someone may have picked a number out of the air. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/56 "2026-03-05T22:00:14Z")
Do individual households use 1500 gallons on average every day? ---
**Author:** ![Ancient\_Nerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed655f/32.png) [@Ancient\_Nerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ancient_Nerd)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/57 "2026-03-05T22:08:40Z")
An acre-foot per year is the number I recall. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/58 "2026-03-05T22:43:01Z")
138 gallons per household per day according to a 2016 study by the Water Research Foundation cited [in this Wikipedia article.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_water_use_in_the_U.S._and_Canada) So almost 11,000 households worth. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2026, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/59 "2026-03-05T23:45:57Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > zoning being changed in the neighborhood where my single family home I owe a mortgage on which is my only major asset is located, allowing multifamily buildings to be built and driving down my property values. Should I be compensated? If there’s demand for multifamily housing then your property is more valuable if it’s upzoned. This is one of the weird ways that zoning restriction increases property value on the one hand (by limiting development thus creating artificial scarcity) and suppressing it on the other hand (by not allowing the highest and best use of property as dictated by market forces). Also you assume that more density always means more bad. Maybe in some shithole suburb where the only way to get around is to drive everywhere, but even there, more housing means more businesses are viable so you get more amenities closer to you than you would otherwise, even if you still have to drive to them. For data centers, the water loops that are directly cooling the servers and/or the air are going to be closed loops that are recirculated and may have antifreeze and antibacterial treatments. That water use is minuscule, even if it’s flushed out on a regular basis. But as mentioned upthread, it’s typical for large commercial chillers to use evaporative cooling towers to improve performance and reduce equipment size. They’re either running the server loops into the cooling tower and then spraying the heat exchanger fins with water, or more likely, the server loops run into a heat exchanger with the cooling tower water, and the cooling tower water is sprayed over baffles in the cooling tower while the fan pulls air through and cools the water, losing some to evaporation as it goes. The point is that the evaporation improves the heat dissipation a lot, like up to 50%. A quick Google search brings up approximately two gallons per hour of water are needed per ton (12,000 BTU) of cooling. On the scale of a home which may need about four tons of air conditioning for half the day, that’s 96 gallons, or a large bathtub worth of water if it used a cooling tower. Significant, but not outrageous. Data center cooling requirements seem to be about 200 BTU per square foot, so a 100,000 SF data center would need 20 million BTU or 1,667 tons of cooling. That’s 3,333 gallons of water per hour or 55 gallons per minute. That’s a 2" pipe running constantly, or based on the 138 gallons per household per day average, as much water as 580 homes use, just for cooling waste heat. I’m sure it pales in comparison to other industrial uses, but it’s still enough to suck a small town dry. Electricity use on the other hand seems to be on the order of tens of megawatts, or the equivalent of tens of thousands of households. For reference, the University of Cincinnati has a central power and heating/cooling plant that has a capacity of 47 megawatts. That powers a campus with over 100 buildings totaling 14 million square feet, supporting 53,000 students and nearly 12,000 staff. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2026, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737/60 "2026-03-06T00:01:22Z")
> [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](#): > > So almost 11,000 households worth. Which is about 10% of the households in the county. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-the-relationship-between-data-centers-and-water-use/1026737.md?page=4)