Live data from Hacker News

How does the US use water?

construction-physics.com

131–140 of 200 posts

Re: How does the US use water?

#131
post #13

> Average per-capita domestic water use in the US is 82 gallons per day. By comparison, German homes use around 33 gallons per person per day, UK homes use around 37 gallons, and French homes use around 39 gallons. I want to know way more information about these figures... like, are there significant outliers? Drastically different usage profiles?

When I worked at a water treatment plant, we produced about 160 million gallons/day of water in the summer time, and only about 80 million gallons/day in the winter time. Now ask yourself what water-consuming activities happen in summer that don't happen in winter. Primarily, lawns. It's lawns. Most of the international difference in water consumption I would chalk up to lawns, given that the US has much larger avera…

And those lawns are typically grass. Even in almost desert like climates.

Grass is thirsty, very thirsty.

Re: How does the US use water?

#132
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, 1.6 trillion gallons of water from the Colorado river goes into irrigation for alfalfa[1]. Google's total water consumption across all data centers in 2023 was 6.4 billion gallons[2]. People are sounding the alarm about water usage in AI data centers while ignoring the real unsustainable industries like animal agriculture. 1: https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/04/research-colorado-river-w... 2: https://www.datacent…

And most of that alfalfa is owned by a Saudi conglomerate that then exports it to the other side of the planet to feed its dairy cattle

[deleted]

Re: How does the US use water?

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much water is wasted on golf courses... Zero. You can't waste water, it goes in a cycle. I mean unless you transport it off-planet. You can waste the energy you spent cleaning it and pumping it around. But between nuclear and solar we ought to have an overabundance of that. In a market economy, if it becomes "economically infeasible" to purify used water, the price goes up slightly, and suddenly it makes a lot…

Water used for nuclear reactor cooling can only be returned to the environment if its temperature is within 0.5 deg F of the local source temperature. I live near a facility that is on the river with several man made cooling lakes. During the winter, there is constant fog and ice by the roads. So much so, that the road to the facility itself has covered bridge crossing one of the lakes. During drought, the capacity o…

That’s a fake constraint though. If there was any actual shortage people would use it immediately.

Temperature controls gate returning to env.

Re: How does the US use water?

#134
post #13

> Average per-capita domestic water use in the US is 82 gallons per day. By comparison, German homes use around 33 gallons per person per day, UK homes use around 37 gallons, and French homes use around 39 gallons. I want to know way more information about these figures... like, are there significant outliers? Drastically different usage profiles?

When I worked at a water treatment plant, we produced about 160 million gallons/day of water in the summer time, and only about 80 million gallons/day in the winter time. Now ask yourself what water-consuming activities happen in summer that don't happen in winter. Primarily, lawns. It's lawns. Most of the international difference in water consumption I would chalk up to lawns, given that the US has much larger avera…

Not really just lawns, but irrigation specifically. I know a lot of people in my country that have detached houses with lawns. I know of no one that owns a sprinkler system. Dry years the lawn just goes a bit brown and no-one cares.

Everyone has a hose, they wash their car and water their flowers by hand.

Re: How does the US use water?

#135
post #20
post #13

> Average per-capita domestic water use in the US is 82 gallons per day. By comparison, German homes use around 33 gallons per person per day, UK homes use around 37 gallons, and French homes use around 39 gallons. I want to know way more information about these figures... like, are there significant outliers? Drastically different usage profiles?

What they are calling “per capita domestic water use” is the per capita public+self supplied, which is not the same as home use. They sort of hand-wave over “most of this is used at home” but really it is inclusive of not only lawns (which are bigger in the US) but commercial use of water as well- commercial landscaping (far more in the US than in Europe) and other business use Plumbing fixtures are also more regulat…

As with most things, I think there's multiple things. US home also tend to be larger, meaning the hot water line is longer from the tank to the shower. Most americans I know tend to leve the shower running before they get in so it "warms up". I've never been in a European shower that's required that.

Re: How does the US use water?

#136
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest alarmist is movement against Nestle using water for bottled water in California. They don’t even use as much as an average golf course. How much water is wasted on golf courses in these arid regions? Or growing water intensive crops like alfalfa that isn’t even directly used to feed people.

Many golf courses in arid regions are on greywater.

That could be used as potable water again. Orange county,CA injects treated waste water back into the aquifer then pumps back out for water.

https://www.ocwd.com/gwrs

Re: How does the US use water?

#137
I'm from the Netherlands. The last few years there have been issues with ground water levels dropping and a lack of rainfall. To the point where water companies are asking consumers to reduce their water use for e.g. irrigating their gardens, shower less long, etc.

Of course, the notion of a water shortage in a country where two of the largest rivers in Europe empty in the North Sea and that keeps about a third of it's land that lies below sea levels dry by actively pumping relatively clean water out is a bit of a weird notion to sell. We have a surplus of water, not a shortage. Rivers overflowing their dikes is an issue we deal with regularly. And a lot of infrastructure to dump that into the North Sea by the millions of liters per day.

The issue isn't that there isn't more clean water than we can handle but that more water gets taken from limited ground water reserves than is added back naturally. This would be a non-issue if we'd mostly use surface water instead.

Most of this ground water isn't even used by consumers but by agriculture. And worse, farmers also work very hard to keep their land dry after irrigating it because they need the ground to be moist, not soaking wet as in a swamp. The water that they drain is very high in nutrients because they are using a lot of fertilizer too. So, basically, agriculture is in the business of taking rain water that dumps on their land and surrounding lands and basically dumping it into rivers without even using it for irrigation. But then when it doesn't rain, they use ground water to irrigate, which then drains into rivers. As a result, nature is suffering because ground water levels are dropping and because surface water is polluted. Ground water is also used for consumers.

The solution is of course to use slightly more expensive to use water from e.g. surface water or rain water (which is generally drained to get rid of it ASAP). Of course a lot of that water isn't as easy to access everywhere so it requires infrastructure (pipes) or storage (reservoirs). But historically, ground water was there and relatively clean (so it can be used without much processing) and people just use it without thinking about it. Most people with gardens don't even capture the water that falls on their roofs, which on an annual basis should be plenty to water their gardens. Neither are they (re)using grey water or rain water for e.g. flushing their toilets. All of that is done using tap water that comes from ground water.

This isn't a shortage crisis but a water abuse crisis. The solution is being a bit smarter about what water we use for which purpose. And a lot of that is rethinking intensive agriculture. We grow crops to feed cattle that produces so much manure that we have severe nitrogen pollution getting in the way of economic growth because we have to limit construction in/near polluted areas. Those crops uses ground water and feed the cattle. The problems are connected.

Re: How does the US use water?

#138
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest alarmist is movement against Nestle using water for bottled water in California. They don’t even use as much as an average golf course. How much water is wasted on golf courses in these arid regions? Or growing water intensive crops like alfalfa that isn’t even directly used to feed people.

Why is water used for golf a waste vs other uses?

the parent poster's using a sort of morality argument to call water usage they dont/cant benefit from as wastage.

Re: How does the US use water?

#139
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest alarmist is movement against Nestle using water for bottled water in California. They don’t even use as much as an average golf course. How much water is wasted on golf courses in these arid regions? Or growing water intensive crops like alfalfa that isn’t even directly used to feed people.

Yep, 1.6 trillion gallons of water from the Colorado river goes into irrigation for alfalfa[1]. Google's total water consumption across all data centers in 2023 was 6.4 billion gallons[2]. People are sounding the alarm about water usage in AI data centers while ignoring the real unsustainable industries like animal agriculture. 1: https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/04/research-colorado-river-w... 2: https://www.datacent…

Talking about wasteful. There 16,000 golf courses that use 312,000 gallons a day[1]. Thats 1.82 trillion gallons annually. Only 28 million people play golf course on a course. Google's MAU is 90%+ of US population, beef or milk consumptions i would guess that 90% of population consumes it at least once a month. We're focusing on things that everyone uses but the things that less than 10% of the populations partake in. Why do we have golf courses in arid regions that have severe water shortages? Before places like LA county spends $8 billion on a toilet to tap system[2], maybe shut down the golf courses first.

1. https://www.npr.org/2008/06/11/91363837/water-thirsty-golf-c...

2. https://www.mwdh2o.com/building-local-supplies/pure-water-so...

Re: How does the US use water?

#140
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would require a much larger area, because servers could not be mounted so densely. Air cooling can't achieve the same amount of heat transferred per unit volume as water cooling. Water has uniquely high specific heat.

Data center water consumption isn't due to it's use as a heat transfer medium, it's due to the evaporative cooling which cashes in water's enthalpy of vaporization. Thr alternative would be to use a heat pump and spend electricity to cool the water that cools the servers.

Ah, I see. I keep thinking that modern datacenters would looks more like [1], or at least like [2], with direct water cooling. Supermicro servers and even Dell PowerEdge servers now have the direct water cooling option.

OTOH the cooling of the resulting hot water can be evaporative indeed :(

[1]: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/blackwell-platform-water-effic...

[2]: https://www.gigabyte.com/Enterprise/DLC-Rack

Post reply on HN