AI data center project sucked 29M gallons of water(www.tomshardware.com)
20 pointsby 2ndorderthought5 hours ago4 comments
  • _aavaa_2 hours ago
    > the 29 million gallons were consumed during temporary construction activities, including concrete work, dust control, and site preparation

    Misleading title

    • yifanlan hour ago
      Is there a AI data center construction process that doesn't involve these costs?
      • _aavaa_40 minutes ago
        Is there a large scale construction project that doesn’t incur these costs? Is the AI data center substantially worse on these metrics that other comparable projects? Or are we talking about it only because it’s AI-related?
        • footydude26 minutes ago
          > Or are we talking about it only because it’s AI-related?

          We're absolutely only talking about it because it's AI.

          From about 5 minutes of digging, I found the below which perhaps helps to put the 29m gallons in context.

          > The Fayette County Water System has a total production capacity of 22.8 million gallons per day (MGD).

          Source: https://fayettega.org/doing-business/global-access-infrastru...

          So...keeping things simple and using 30d months:

          Using 29M gallons over 15 months = 29,000,000 / (15 * 30) = 64,444 gallons per day avg

          Based on 22.8m daily production capacity that's less than 0.3% of the total production capacity per day.

          (Happy to be corrected if my napkin maths is wrong / i'm missing something here!)

    • 2ndorderthought2 hours ago
      I think it's important to know the total costs environmentally for these outfits
      • _aavaa_2 hours ago
        But what criteria do we use to judge whether these numbers are too high or too low? How do they compare to other construction projects of this size?
    • aaron6952 hours ago
      [dead]
    • sfmikean hour ago
      The title doesn't mention a time horizon it states what was used which it was. This is not misleading.
  • isawczukan hour ago
    During the construction, not operating. In scale it's 44 Olympic pools.
  • ChrisArchitect6 minutes ago
    [dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48079333
  • ReptileMan31 minutes ago
    So not much at all. Lets say enough for growing 4 tonnes of almonds.