GOING into our second year of drought there is no justification for mandated water use restrictions and / or increasing water and sewage fees for Virginia residential customers while Virginia data centers are using on average four ( 4 ) million gallons of water daily. Too much of the additional strain on utilities from data centers has been imposed on Virginia's citizens, who's water and electric bills haven't increased with the increase in data centers in our Commonwealth? Corporations paid for enough votes in our legislature in Richmond, with the blatant support of Gov spangerger ( at what price one wonders ), for the tax break on equipment for data centers to be extended. Since they have this tax break mandate the older data centers should spend the money to switch their cooling systems from fresh drinking water to reclaimed water or pay higher fees for the fresh drinking water they use. Depending on the state of the drought as the year progresses and data center cooling needs some of them may have to shut down some servers ( server brownout ) to reduce the amount of water they use. Remember, Virginia is a Commonwealth NOT a corporatewealth, and we the people have reached our limit on our elected officials kow-towing to bezos, zuckerberg, musk and the rest of their lot. Thankfully spanberger can't run for re-election, but the Virginia Assembly would do well to remember this. From ABC8 WRIC.....
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RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Most of the Commonwealth is under a drought warning, and Governor Abigail Spanberger has encouraged residents to conserve water where they can. But with Virginia being the data center capital of the world, the amount of water used to keep them running is raising eyebrows.
According to the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, a Virginia data center uses an average of four million gallons of water a day. The average person uses around 90 gallons a day, so it can be frustrating to hear politicians asking you to cut down on showers or watering the lawn when the data center next door is using much more.
The machines at data centers create a lot of heat and run 24/7 so the water is used to keep equipment cool.
Ron Murchek, an Executive General Adjuster with Sedgwick and data center expert, said companies predominantly use fresh drinking water at their data center, but newer ones are starting to use what’s called reclaimed water.
“Maybe water that they have captured in nearby ponds, rainwater they’ve captured from their own property, their roofs,” Murchek said. “They’re really using a lot of reclaimed water for sewage treatment plants.”
The hope is this water can be used up to five times before it evaporates.
But the problem is older centers that use fresh drinking water would have to pay an unappealing price to switch to the more environmentally friendly option.
“A lot of that really comes down to just dollars and cents,” he said. “If the building wasn’t constructed to use renewable sources, there’s significant costs involved to move to that type of a repurpose of the water.”
Murchek said it’s time for companies to make it more of a priority.
“There’s a lot of planning that has to change,” he said. “We can no longer just look at the sky for a storm. We really need to look at our resource availability. These data centers need to remain reliable neighbors to everyone in Virginia. Sustainability, disaster recovery must go hand in hand.”
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