New Fears For Arizona As The Development Of Big Tech Data Centers Are Depleting Water Sources
The American state of Arizona is known for its natural beauty and
stunning wildlife. Did we mention how many people come to this state for
leisure-filled activities like hiking and more thanks to the beautiful
mountain terrain?
The state has a very hot and dry atmosphere
and it’s definitely shocking to see the sudden emergency of huge data
centers that are owned by the biggest tech giants around the globe.
From
Google’s establishment in Mesa to Meta and Microsoft too - you name it
and you’ll find some tech giants having their facility developed in the
region.
Now at first glance, it might seem like there’s no
problem. After all, the more the development, the more the business, and
the greater the state can benefit. But wait, this is coming at a huge
cost. And that’s linked to the depletion of water sources.
Each
data center needs millions of gallons each day to enable the cooling of
its facility. Meanwhile, other projects would need even more, and let’s
not forget how the state houses thousands of residents that need their
own sources.
Ever since such developments started to spring into
place, we saw the entire metro area in the Phoenix region be called the
destination for all data centers. One after another, they just started
to open up, back to back.
So many of these centers are using
huge supplies of water to ensure their technical gear stays safe because
it can really reach boiling temperatures. Be it mobile sessions,
meetings on Zoom, and even videos across YouTube- the things to do are
plenty and equipment would obviously be used for this purpose.
For
a while now, the search engine giant Google has begun going public with
more news on this front. They did admit to using gallons and gallons
for their benefits and that’s a lot. It’s almost like supplying 29
entire golf courses with water in America.
In the same way, tech
giant Meta has added some of its own details on what exactly it’s doing
with the state’s water supplies and how its own facilities make use of
several millions of water in cubic meter measurement sources, that are
equivalent to 1 billion gallons.
But alarming reports speaking
about the state soon having its water supplies depleted are obviously
very concerning. Just seven days back, we heard about how the governor
put out a plan to prevent construction from taking place in certain
regions near Phoenix. The news came when they realized that groundwater
couldn’t support the rapid rate at which the construction of these data
centers was taking place.
We agree that the data centers are not
the only thing to blame but they’re definitely a major factor that
contributes to the problem and having scarce water supplies can really
be disastrous in the long run as more tech facilities are being planned
as we speak this moment.
