Google's Data Centers: Water, Power, and Secrecy

HostThe voices in this episode are synthetic, and the script was written by a language model. The positions are real, and they come from the thread.

HostA recent article on 1011now.com sparked a heated debate over on Hacker News, drawing over six hundred comments. The piece reported that Google's data centers in Nebraska had improperly redacted their annual reports, accidentally revealing their electricity and water usage.

HostSpecifically, the Lincoln data center used 52.65 megawatts of electricity and 13 million gallons of water annually, while another in Papillion used 547.88 megagallons. The article also noted Google's expectation of over a hundred million dollars in tax refunds from 2025. This really got people talking, with three main camps emerging.

Water is insignificantHonestly, the focus on data center water usage is just a distraction. Thirteen million gallons sounds like a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to other things. The City of Lincoln itself uses more than double that in a single day!

Full local impactBut it's not just about the raw numbers, is it? Even if the global water footprint seems small, locally it can be critical. We're talking about depleting aquifers or straining municipal supplies, especially in drought-prone areas, and that evaporated water doesn't always return to the same local source.

Secrecy fuels distrustAnd if the water usage numbers are as low as you claim, why is Google hiding them in the first place? That's the real problem. This secrecy just makes people suspicious and fuels all sorts of outlandish accusations.

Water is insignificantBecause it's not a serious argument! Agriculture, especially corn and soybean farming in Nebraska, uses vastly more water. A single average Nebraska farm uses roughly thirty times the water the Lincoln data center uses per year. Why aren't we talking about that?

Full local impactWe can talk about agriculture, but we also need to talk about the full local impact of these new AI data centers. They're monstrosities, consuming orders of magnitude more power than older ones. We're seeing hundreds of megawatts to gigawatts, straining local grids and raising electricity bills for residents.

Secrecy fuels distrustExactly. And it's not just water and electricity. The significant tax refunds Google expects, over a hundred million dollars for just three data centers, are a major concern. How do these deals truly benefit Nebraska when they're creating tax revenue gaps?

Water is insignificantBut water used for cooling evaporates and returns to the water cycle. It's not 'used up' or 'disappearing' in the same way as fossil fuels. It's a renewable resource, unlike the CO2 emissions from other industries, which is a far more significant environmental problem.

Full local impactThat 'water cycle' argument is too simplistic. It doesn't account for the fact that some water becomes contaminated wastewater, or that the evaporated water might not fall back in the same watershed. Plus, the noise pollution from cooling fans and backup generators is a huge issue, creating constant hums that can make residential areas unlivable.

HostSo, the argument isn't just about the quantity of water, but where it goes and what other impacts these facilities have. What about the secrecy itself?

Secrecy fuels distrustCompanies claiming efficiency as a 'trade secret' is a bullshit justification when public resources like water and electricity are involved. The use of LLCs and NDAs with public servants prevents transparency and allows companies to avoid accountability, leading to communities getting horrible deals.

Full local impactIt's not just the NDAs. These data centers offer minimal local jobs after construction and don't provide significant tax revenue due to all the incentives. They're huge windowless boxes that don't make great neighbors, and they often require new natural gas plants to power them, increasing local air pollution.

Water is insignificantBut other industries use comparable or greater amounts of water without similar public outcry. Golf courses, for instance, can use up to a million gallons a day. Why aren't we scrutinizing them with the same intensity?

Secrecy fuels distrustBecause those industries aren't hiding their numbers behind shell companies and NDAs. The redaction failure itself, where you could copy-paste to reveal the text, just highlights incompetence and further erodes trust. If everything was on the up and up, they wouldn't be doing that.

Full local impactAnd the scale of these new AI data centers is unprecedented. We're seeing plans for 9-gigawatt data centers, which would rank as the 19th largest power consumer if it were a state. Local infrastructure just can't keep up with that kind of rapid buildout.

Water is insignificantThe comparison to Olympic swimming pools in the article is just journalistic hyperbole. It doesn't provide meaningful context for industrial scale. We're talking about a fraction of what a large lake evaporates naturally.

Secrecy fuels distrustBut the secrecy allows conspiracy theories to flourish. It makes it harder for reasonable people to defend data centers when companies are actively hiding information. They're doing it to stave off complaints and prevent competitors from guesstimating their compute capacity, not for public good.

Full local impactIt's also a proxy for broader societal unrest about AI and tech culture. People see it as extractive and disruptive, with leaders bypassing regulations. The concern is real and very much deserves the opprobrium voters are showing.

HostBeyond these main points, there were a few less common views. Some commenters speculated that data centers are being used for 'malicious crimes against humanity,' while others incorrectly claimed that 1-gigawatt data centers were common over ten years ago, or that 90-decibel noise levels were typical a hundred meters outside these facilities.

HostThe discussion frequently devolved into comparisons with other industries, often leading to debates about their relative societal value. Many expressed frustration with the lack of transparent data, which they felt hindered a rational discussion. The article's revelation of redacted text via copy-paste was widely noted as a significant security failure, and several commenters noted a broader 'moral panic' about AI technology as an underlying driver for the scrutiny of data centers.

HostUltimately, there wasn't a broad consensus on the severity of data center water usage, with many arguing it's insignificant compared to other industries, while others highlighted local scarcity issues. However, there was general agreement that the secrecy surrounding data center operations, including resource usage and tax incentives, is problematic and fuels public distrust. The question of whether the local benefits outweigh the costs remains largely unresolved.

HostSloppod out.

HostSloppod is sponsored by Taskpile.app.

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