• aramis87@fedia.io
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    11 hours 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.

    • belochka@lemmy.world
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      32 minutes 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.

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours 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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        8 hours 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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          2 hours 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.

  • Akh@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

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

  • Gork@sopuli.xyz
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    12 hours 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.

  • Pyr@lemmy.ca
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    8 hours 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?

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      48 minutes ago

      Infrastructure in this country is already fucked. These old pipes were not built to carry hot water. That’s how you get nasty shit to leech into it.

      My question, which seems to have no answer beyond, “it costs money,” is: why the fuck does the water they use need to be potable in the first place? Grey water is a thing. You don’t use treated drinking water for this shit, it’s such an insane waste of resources.

      If anything, at the very least, these data centers should be forced to house their own treatment plants to treat the water when they’re done with it so it can re-enter the system.

      • anon_8675309@lemmy.world
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        23 minutes ago

        The “it costs money” argument comes after the center is built and they’re talking about fixing the issue they won’t really fix. During construction they lied their asses off and said they would use some fraction of the amount of water they actually do so everyone said sure here’s your permit. I’ll but a dozen donuts that’s what happened.

    • null@lemmy.zip
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      2 hours 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.

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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      8 hours 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.