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Posted on 05/16/2026 5:07:50 AM PDT by Red Badger
An artificial intelligence data center was running up a water bill for the ages, and local residents were the ones to point out the problem.
In November, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Microsoft had a new “superfactory” named Fairwater spanning over 1 million square feet outside of Atlanta.
Chief Technical Officer Mark Russinovich explained why the site is so massive. “To make improvements in the capabilities of the AI, you need to have larger and larger infrastructure to train it,” he said in a statement.
The site developer, Quality Technology Services, purchased the plot in 2022 for $154 million.
Ironically, Microsoft claimed the site uses a “closed-loop cooling system” that “consumes almost zero water” to operate.
According to a report by Politico, the issue wasn’t discovered until residents of a subdivision in Fayetteville, Georgia, started complaining that their water pressure was extremely low.
When the utility company looked into the matter, they found two water lines going to QTS that weren’t in their system.
They determined the facility had used almost 30 million gallons of water valued at close to $150,000.
This information only became public last week when a letter addressed to QTS, written in May 2025, came out via a public records request. The letter did not specify the time period for the water usage. A water official said it was about four months; a QTS representative said it was closer to 9 to 15 months.
(Excerpt) Read more at westernjournal.com ...
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“When the utility company looked into the matter, they found two water lines going to QTS that weren’t in their system.
Somebody put those pipes there. When and who? Moreover who is the inspector in that area?
Two pipes going into a facility that the water folks did not know were there? That is suspect. What kind of metering system does they use? Around my area it seems they want to slap smart meters to measure the smart meters.
Someone is incompetent. Or criminal.
This data center has a footprint of almost a square mile?
Even in Texas, a square is a lot of land!
Water is not guzzled. The water is used as a medium for heat exchange and still exists after absorbing the heat generated by the AI computer
For something “artificial” they certainly have a massive appetite for water and power! ...just like an animal.
The writer is an ignorant idiot
“Even in Texas, a square is a lot of land!”
They’re building one in Box Elder County Utah that’s huge and the people there really upset. My question is why do we need so many of these data centers.
Strange, isn’t it?
And nobody saw nuthin’ when all the undocumented piping went in.
Microsoft is developing what is intended to be the world’s first commercial fusion reactor.
Did’t they miss the boat on that idea?.
Yeah...it doesn’t happen in a vacuum without oversight. As though you can just “tap in” to a massive amount of the water supply discretely without anyone knowing.
I don't quite get it. From where were the pipes coming?
Or, locate them in cold areas where excess heat could be sold as is done in some large cities around the world.
An AM radio program I listened to yesterday added some context to this story. The water district was converting from manual read meters to remote read and the lines to the data center had not been converted so they had not been billing them. He indicated that the person complaining about water pressure was apparently on a well.
His Commentary; He indicated that this story was initially promoted by an overseas group in Italy which (IIRC) had Chinese Funding? The Chinese are actively supporting groups that are opposed to us building Data Centers. They would prefer that the Data Centers that they are building be used instead.
The show was the Eric Erickson show. It would be in the show notes for 5/15/26 or 5/14/26. I am not willing to sign up for his show notes or the podcast. I have enough problems cleaning my Email inbox.
I have a hard time believing you can’t design a closed loop cooling system for a data center.
Thank you for the context. Many posters will ignore the information because it hampers their narrative. Embarrassing to see such knee jerk attacks on FR on a story that with so many obvious flaws.
It's well known that a typical data center consumes as much electricity as 100K + households, thus stressing the grid and driving up everyone's electric bill. Their water use will be nearly as bad, particularly for those data centers that are being built in places like Nevada and Utah where reservoirs and aquifers are already low and stressed by existing water use.
And all so that Silicon Valley Oligarchs can replace white collar workers with AI and run cryptocurrency scams.
Ah, Web2.0 and “let’s give free laptops to every kid in public school”: what could possibly go wrong?
90% BulletTrain crappola — $$ to skim by SiliconValley arseholes — who pass on $$ to politicos who push it.
I’d made the comment about the Shiavo case in the general sense of being fed up with the “it’s okay when we do it” attitudes of the PTB and those who benefit off of hypocrisy, corruption, and the bureaucratic/machine-run disconnections from humanity.
AI can hoover up actual resources and everything anyone says or does, and then get things wrong and deceive all day long with the excuse that some [unknown, unaccountable] programm-ing (not even pinned to a human programm-er) did something somewhere.
Too big to find the points-of-failure, but anyway here’s your fine for your own micro-transgression.. forgetting to renew the car registration or some such. We have readers. A good day if only waved off with a warning this time.
Obscured behind all of this are actual humans who have no love for their fellow man.
The good news is that one day it will all go horribly wrong for the bad actors, by the very schemes they designed for everyone else. 😃
/rant
AI: What’s not to love about it?
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