alt Hacker NewsWhy don’t data centers use gray water more often? Wouldn’t that be better for basically everyone?
My guess is it’s some combination of the infrastructure not existing, the distribution being bad, and the treatment costs not penciling out.
But that feels like the kind of thing municipal utilities could solve with pricing. Potable water should probably be priced differently for residential use than for big commercial/industrial users, in a way that pushes them toward non-potable sources wherever possible.
A fun Texas water fact I always bring up: the entire state’s monthly freshwater use is roughly a week of freshwater inflow into the Chesapeake Bay. Texas would be the 8th-largest GDP in the world if it were a country, and its whole monthly freshwater demand is basically a few months of water that the Chesapeake just dumps into the ocean. (Of course, estuaries make use of the water so it's not just wasted but it's illustrative imo)
Another fun comparison point is yearly Texas uses 0.08% the volume of the Great Lakes in freshwater but ~ 30-50% of the volume of all the lakes in Texas.
We've got a lot of water but it's not distributed evenly and we should probably build some sort of water pipeline eventually so water rich states can sell to water poor states.
Again, this is all just speculation by someone who knows not a damn thing about municipal water management.
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Those of us by the Great Lakes would prefer that our water not get sold to other places, thanks.
Grey water would normally get treated and then discharged into a river or lake or other local water body. If you evaporate it at a data center, then you break that local loop. It's really only different from using potable water in that you save a bit on the expense of fully treating it.
Grey water from where?
Using 1/4th the entire freshwater inflow into the Chesapeake Bay makes it sound enormous. That's multiple major rivers for a bit over 30 million people.
I live near the Potomac and always figured the region was wet enough that water was not a concern. You have me rethinking that somewhat.
> Why don’t data centers use gray water more often?
DCs will just use the cheapest source that meets their needs. If they have to treat greywater and that costs more than municipal potable water, they'll use the potable water. (In part this is utilities selling their potable water too cheaply.)
> Wouldn’t that be better for basically everyone?
No; if it was cheaper for DCs, they'd already be doing it. But it isn't an insurmountable cost -- DCs still pencil with slightly more expensive cooling.