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Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

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Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#311

Post by culi »

jml7c5 wrote: post #217
SilverElfin wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a canard? In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Even if datacenters are highly efficient, if the water supply is strained, you can pollute people’s supply by drawing wells down too far and things like that.

>In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Can you cite a source for this? I can't find it anywhere.

[dead]

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#312

Post by IshKebab »

Gormo wrote: post #294
IshKebab wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list isn't invalid. Those tropes existed before AI but they weren't used incessantly like AI does.

What mechanism do you suppose would cause LLMs to use writing tropes at a significantly greater rate than than is found in their training data?

I have no idea, but the fact is they do!

Probably something to do with the way they do RLHF?

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#313

Post by culi »

Gormo wrote: post #267
ralph84 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big Tech isn't exactly doing a great job of marketing them. Saying they're for AI while doing mass layoffs attributed to AI isn't a winning message.

Why does the construction of buildings to run business operations of any kind need to be "marketed" in the first place, absent manipulative media campaigns trying to manufacture a controversy around them?

Because the public is affected? If they were to run a highway through the middle of San Fransisco, a lot of people would also be affected. Like in Eastern Oregon a data center used agricultural water for evaporative cooling. The remaining water that was pumped out has nitrate levels over 5x the legal limit. Enough to cause cancer and miscarriages in nearby homes.

Our environment and communities are being treated as economic externalities.

- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

- https://idahoconservation.org/blog/the-dark-side-of-data-cen...

- https://www.akcp.com/index.php/2025/09/02/truth-about-data-w...

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#314

Post by davkan »

Gormo wrote: post #307
davkan wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, my point is that is how most people evaluate these things. How does this massive infrastructure project benefit me and my community. And the math with datacenters is very clearly that they don't. You may think that they have no right to restrict building on private property but that is simply not the case. Municipalities usually do have the right to restrict usage of private property based on their laws. This pre…

I don't think most people see things this way. That itself is likely an exaggerated perception, and NIMBYism isn't quite as much of a controlling factor as is often believed. These projects usually do get built, but when NIMBYs do succeed, it's because they manage to demonstrate how the project runs afoul of rules that are there to prevent negative externalities. Again, there are no rules mandating positive ones, and…

> Again, there are no rules mandating positive ones, and even if that mindset motivates some people, it is not and never has been actionable in its own right.

I never said there was??

> No, it's not. You just admitted that it isn't, and that these concerns are just being used as a pretext to challenge AI.e

I did not. I said the online AI fervor brings eyeballs to local datacenter projects and once people are aware of these projects they are against them because of the negative impacts to their community not simply because they are against AI if they even are. In fact many people in Utah are pro AI but against the construction of Stratos simply because it is _bad_for_their_community_.

> Yes, that's exactly the point I'm making: the complaints about exaggerated externalities (and novel arguments like complaining that power consumption per se is somehow an externality) are all contrivances, and nonsubstantive in their own right.

You can say power consumption and resultant increase in costs for residents isn't an "externality", I don't really care. If my power bill goes up by $5 a month then a datacenter is bad for me and my community and I don't want it on my grid. You can say I don't have the right to stop construction and they have the free ability to build what they want and buy any power they want from the power company, I don't care. I have to power to use my government to stop the construction of something through whatever means are available to it or me.

The reality we live in is that these datacenter projects require buy-in from the states and municipalities. These projects almost universally require discretionary approval from governing bodies to some degree. That may be regarding tax incentives necessary for profitability or zoning or a myriad of other red tapes. Many of those governments are responsive to the people and the people _do_not_want_ datacenters in their community.

You can say they only don't want it because of AI fearmongering mindrot, I don't agree. I think it's because once people are aware of the projects and understand the facts they recognize datacenters are only to the detriment their community and I don't care to argue that further with you on their motivations. Regardless of their motives they are free to use their government to block datacenter construction by any legal means.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#315

Post by varenc »

petre wrote: post #151
fc417fc802 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the entire situation is quite confusing because in addition to spanning a wide range of geographies and local utility situations there's also a wide variance in the care taken by the different players. For example I was surprised to learn of a recent ~300 MW buildout with entirely closed loop cooling (I had erroneously believed all cooling at that scale to be evaporative). Meanwhile we've got whatever x…

The heat has to go somewhere and that is the environment. 300 MWh is enough energy to boil over 3k metric tons of water. That's 107 medium fuel trucks for perspective.

This makes it seem like you think all energy consumption leads to water boiling? At the peak of a sunny day in the american southwest, a random square mile receives over 2000 megawatts of power from the sun. In a 24-hour period that same square receives ~16 gigawatt-hours of solar energy. It doesn't all get used to boil water. And as others have said, with a closed loop cooling system, no water is evaporated that isn't also re-condensed.

My 1500W space heater could boil 4.32 gallons of water every hour. But it isn't.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#316

Post by varenc »

hunterpayne wrote: post #155
petre wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heat has to go somewhere and that is the environment. 300 MWh is enough energy to boil over 3k metric tons of water. That's 107 medium fuel trucks for perspective.

Luckily AI data centers produce nowhere near that amount of heat. Remember the heat is waste and 300 MWh is the total draw. Some of that energy becomes heat. That ratio is somewhere like 100:1 though. Also, the waste water is only like 10F hotter than the intake. We build GW sized PP all the time and they will leak far more heat (as like on the order of 100x) than a 300 MWh AI data center. Thought there were supposed…

In the macro physics sense, all energy eventually becomes heat somewhere. My 1500W space heater is perfectly efficient and produces 1500W of heat, and my 1500W crypto mining rig does too. Thermodynamically there's no difference. Where would the energy go if not into heat? Even energy that does things like push air or emit radiation, eventually becomes heat somewhere. In the case of a power plant, that somewhere is just very far away with the end user.

Though there might be practical differences though between the excess heat intentionally exhausted, and other heat. Just speaking from a very macro sense.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#317

Post by SilverElfin »

jml7c5 wrote: post #217
SilverElfin wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a canard? In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Even if datacenters are highly efficient, if the water supply is strained, you can pollute people’s supply by drawing wells down too far and things like that.

>In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Can you cite a source for this? I can't find it anywhere.

The other comment is correct. I meant QTS in Georgia

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#318

Post by expedition32 »

culi wrote: post #309
tptacek wrote: post #65

The Erin Brockovich page itself repeats the canard, on the front page, that these sites endanger ecosystems with their water consumption.

Data centers are massive consumers of water. There are closed loop designs that technically use less water but they: A) Make up less than 10% of data centers; B) Cost much more upfront; C) Require massive investment in waste water treatment. These designs still need to "bleed the lines" once a month and get rid of sludge that is now full of anti-freeze, anti-fungals, and PFAS It is not at all inaccurate to say data c…

Yep companies are cheap bastards. Sure you can make environmentally sound data centers. Those are not the ones they want to build.

Trump has been neutering the EPA for a reason.

I don't know if HN is really naive or just pretending.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#319

Post by altairprime »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #25
altairprime wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are privately-held datacenters counted? Like, prssumably chipmakers have a few of their own in their home regions..?

“Privately-held”? I don’t think governments are building them.

As opposed to “government”, though I suppose also as opposed to “DaaS” businesses.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#320

Post by tptacek »

culi wrote: post #309
tptacek wrote: post #65

The Erin Brockovich page itself repeats the canard, on the front page, that these sites endanger ecosystems with their water consumption.

Data centers are massive consumers of water. There are closed loop designs that technically use less water but they: A) Make up less than 10% of data centers; B) Cost much more upfront; C) Require massive investment in waste water treatment. These designs still need to "bleed the lines" once a month and get rid of sludge that is now full of anti-freeze, anti-fungals, and PFAS It is not at all inaccurate to say data c…

We know how much water all data centers put together consume, and it's not even close to what we spend on golf courses.
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