• aramis87@fedia.io
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    18 days ago

    two high-capacity water connections were not being properly monitored. One had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and another was not tied to a billing account.

    Yeah, you don’t just “accidentally” install an “extra” water pipeline like that.

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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      18 days ago

      Funny story there.

      I once moved in to a property development where the development collectively paid for water access.

      The water was turned on for the developers during construction, but when construction was finished, the city closed the account without remembering to transfer to the strata. So the strata went for almost 10 years without paying beyond the base rate for water, before someone investigated. At that point, the city only back-dated the water use bill to the start of the year, thankfully for the homeowners.

      So yeah, it happens, probably pretty regularly.

      • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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        18 days ago

        I just bought a house which has a pump and water line for garden hoses and irrigation

        I have no idea where the water is coming from

        The house has a well, but the irrigation system is completely separate and has a pipe running somewhere that I have no idea about.

        • Clearwater@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          You could flip the breaker off for the well to find out.

          Once there’s no more pressure from the well, if the irrigation system keeps pressure, you know wherever that water comes from, it’s not your hole.

    • belochka@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      Since it’s known how much water they’ve used, the problem is possible to rectify.

      At the same time the accident’s father in local government should be in a place where you carry your soup very carefully.

  • Gork@sopuli.xyz
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    18 days ago

    $147,474 / 29,000,000 gal = $0.0051 / gal

    A homeowner in Fayetteville GA would probably be paying anywhere from $30-$80 or so per month, but they certainly aren’t getting nearly as much water per dollar as this data center.

    • potpotato@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      Water is generally billed at 1k gal rate. $5.10 is still about 1/12 of what I pay (which is high because crumpling infrastructure).

  • Akh@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Got to keep these servers cool so elon can have grok generate porn…

  • Janx@piefed.social
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    18 days ago

    If I “use without a bill” water, money, groceries, etc, it’s a felony, even if it’s only 0.1% of what this company stole. Why are they sanewashing this behavior!?

  • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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    18 days ago

    Honestly question though …

    Does a data centre actually pollute or dirty the water when used to cool it’s stuff?

    Could it not just take the water, run it through the system, heat the water a little bit to cool the stuff it needs, then run the water back into the city lines which might even save people a few cents on the water heating bills?

    • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      The problem is that’s not what happened here. This data center is under construction. It’s not operational yet. So the construction used this water over a period of months for dust control and mixing concrete and so on and weren’t billed for it.

      Also, the way data centers are supposed to use cooling is something called a closed loop. It’s similar to what you have in your vehicle. Or a liquid cooling setup in a computer. So the water isn’t supposed to go back into the cities water table or their treatment system.

      The water from the construction will do that but it is no longer potable so it has to be retreated to be safe to drink etc.

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      heat the water a little bit to cool the stuff it needs

      No. Heating the water a little bit would not be sufficient at cooling what the datacenters need to cool. You have to heat the water a whole hell of a lot.

    • null@lemmy.zip
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      18 days ago

      I was wondering the same thing. Turns out thermal pollution is a thing. They would heat a lake at that rate.

      There are ways to cool water and recycle it. If they are using that much water, I bet they cannot cycle water because it wouldn’t cool fast enough.