Your commentary is spot-on, I’m in roughly in the middle of the Great Lakes and data centers are barely mentioned. If the water usage was true then there would be endless construction of these centers in every direction.
The big issue is power, not water.
I just did the math. A small river near me flows around 1500 cu. ft. / s.
That is 3.5 x 10^11 gallons / year. (!!!)
One of the biggest powerplants in the country is sited on that river. It gets cooling water for 4 massive hyperbolic natural draft cooling towers from it. The raw river water gets cleaned up on site, there is a platoon of chemists and techs who work there on the water systems.
I see people hyperventilating over one BILLION gallons per year for a mega scale project. OK. That’s 1 x 10^9 gallons / year. That’s less than 1/3% of the flow of this very small river.
There are reasons to be concerned with the AI data center hype. Water usage is rarely one of them, but it sure is a squirrel.
Plus, at Niagara Falls(the Robert Moses Power Project)makes some of the least expensive and reliable electric generation in the country. Plus there is a far amount of water running downhill to the Atlantic Ocean EVERYDAY 24/7.
Plus, at Niagara Falls(the Robert Moses Power Project)makes some of the least expensive and reliable electric generation in the country. Plus there is a far amount of water running downhill to the Atlantic Ocean EVERYDAY 24/7.