Public accounts of data center water use must consider two different factors, Kandiah said: direct use — that is, the water actually flowing through the facility to cool the computers inside — and indirect use, water used in energy production, which requires large amounts of water, particularly in fossil fuel energy production.
DAYTON DAILY NEWS INVESTIGATES
The cost of data centers
Massive data centers are proposed to be built across southwest Ohio. Our investigation looks at the cost and consequences of these power-hungry, water-thirsty, tax-supported facilities.
Reporting by London Bishop and Bryn Dippold.
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To what degree data center facilities compete with other users (agriculture, industry, residential drinking water) depends on a few things, Kandiah said, including the source of the water and the scale of the facility. Estimates of daily water use for so-called “hyperscale” data centers, such as those run by Amazon, are between one and five million gallons of water per day.
“It is like if you have a certain amount of food in a pot and you wanted to share, the people who you want to feed are more, so you’re going to be competing,” Kandiah said.
Ohio has unique problems when it comes to water use compared to the rest of the country. Broadly speaking, fresh water quantity isn’t so much the problem as water quality. Asked whether residents should be concerned, Kandiah said residents should be proactive: seeking clarity on where the water comes from, and perhaps more importantly, where it’s going.
Credit: Joseph Cooke
Credit: Joseph Cooke
“If you go on the same issues with California or Texas ... their problem is quantity. They are fighting for that. Here we have enough water, to my knowledge,” he said. “But even if you look into Ohio within the last 15 years, we have a number of algae blooms, now we are talking about the PFAS, then the eastern side (of Ohio), there’s fracking and other things, so this is a new one.”
A proposed Ohio Environmental Protection Agency permit that would allow data centers to release wastewater into Ohio’s lakes and streams, under certain conditions, garnered concerns during a December public hearing.
One of the region’s largest proposed data centers, in Trenton, would rely solely on that city’s water and sewer system and dispose of that water “just like any other wastewater,” said Trenton Mayor Ryan Perry.
Perry added having a data center in a city is “safer” than having one in a township, because “there’s a lot more restrictive laws on how the water is to be handled.”
Trenton’s water treatment plant has a 5-million-gallon-per-day capacity; it could handle up to 6 million gallons with minor improvements, according to Perry. Daily usage now for the city of Trenton is estimated at 1.5 million gallons per day, Perry said.
During peak usage months, the incoming data center is expected to use 2.3 million gallons of water per month per data center building, according to city officials. This equates to about 9.2 million gallons a month for four data center buildings, or about 296,774 gallons per day in a 31-day month.
There are ways to reduce water usage, regardless of industry, Kandiah said. The first is to hyper-optimize water use, such as in drip irrigation, which is the subject of continuous technological advancement. The other is to use “recycled,” non-potable water from other uses.
“In some places they do not use the drinking water directly or source water. They use the recycled water, the agriculture water. So that (will) reduce the direct water impact out,” he said.
