[tpmoney]

That whole paragraph also seems completely unrelated to the issue as well. It doesn’t sound like water supply is the issue so much as sediment in the water breaking pumps and clogging the infrastructure.

I guess the theory here is that the amount of water being cycled is stirring up sediment somehow? But if that’s the theory they don’t really say that or talk to anyone who says why or how that’s happening. Is the consumed water being returned to the aquifer somehow and churning up sediment with a lot of added turbulence? Is the volume being consumed creating some sort of suction effect that’s pulling sediment up? Was this project one of the ones that required “dewatering” as described in the article? Is the theory that is the thing that caused the problem and if so, does that mean the approving process for that needs an overhaul?

Not to say there aren’t issues to be addressed here, but the big “gallons of water” number seems to be tossed around a lot in these discussions with no quantification about what that actually means. The solution to the problem is different if that means gallons of water being pulled from the ecosystem entirely , or if it means gallons of water being heated and having effects on the ecosystem, or it means gallons of water burning through processing and treatment plant resources faster.

[toast0]

I mean, given that the datacenter is only 1,000 feet away from their home, it may be that just the earth moving and heavy equipment for construction disturbed the waters they were tapping into. I don't see an indication in the article of the position of their wellhead or the depth of their well.

Small changes can make a big difference, I had to replace my submersed well pump, and even though it should be at the same depth as the old one, I still get a lot more sediment, even years later.

I'll say that it's pretty shocking that a data center was built so close to at least one home. I'd expect there to be more of a buffer between industrial and residential, especially in such a low density setting.

[reaperducer]

I mean, given that the datacenter is only 1,000 feet away from their home, it may be that just the earth moving and heavy equipment for construction disturbed the waters they were tapping into.

Keep reading. The article details that this is a problem for entire cities, not just the one home introduced at the beginning of the article.

[tpmoney]

It's certainly possible, though I wonder is building a data center like this significantly more "destabilizing" to the ground water than say building a housing development? Many folks have had massive housing communities built at high speed 1000 feet from their property and we haven't seen these sorts of stories about well issues with that (that I'm aware of).

I think this is something I find immensely frustrating with the NYT and major media these days. Even the most basic sort of follow up questions never seem to be asked by their reporters. We're told "500,000 gallons of water" can be consumed, but noticeably lacking is any information about whether or not this particular data center consumers that much water. We're told that they use "about 10%" of the county's daily use. But we're also told that a pending request for 6 million gallons is "more than the county's entire daily use". So for ease of numbers let's say that the county's entire daily use then is a nice round 5 million gallons. That would indeed put the data center usage at 500,000, but if that's the true number, why not say that? Also the article starts by telling us that "Months after construction began in 2018" their well problems started, but the end of the article tells us that Meta bulldozed the forest by their house in 2019, and that their troubles started after that. The article also says that while construction began in 2018, the facility wasn't finished until last year. Even if the facility is consuming 500,000 gallons of water a day today, there's no possible way it was dong that "months" after construction started if construction only finished last year.

Also, if Google satellite imagery is to be believed, the part of the property that Meta built on near their home only just started getting cleared in 2019, and was still just clear cut land and dirt roads in April of 2021. Buildings started going in sometime between that time and February 2023. In late 2019 when they were already replacing appliances, the nearest heavy construction on the data center property was a half a mile from their property.

Of interest is that in that same area, just south of the new data center is also a brand new (as of 2022) water reclamation facility. A facility on which construction started in 2020, but for which there was already an existing pumping station and plans for work there had been in the works since around 2005. (https://www.covnews.com/news/new-newton-water-reclamation-fa...). Again if google satellite imagery is to be believed, work on that pumping station looks like it started in 2013 sometime, and ground breaking and clearing for the new expanded facility also started in 2019. Did that cause problems with the ground water? It seems like it treats water and discharges out into the river basin so maybe not? But also seems like the sort of thing a reporter might want to follow up on.

None of this is to dismiss the very real problem these people are facing, but at the same time, this reporting is frustratingly vague about both A) what the actual timeline of events and proposed mechanism of action is and B) any external evaluation of those claims and examination into other possible causes.

> I'll say that it's pretty shocking that a data center was built so close to at least one home. I'd expect there to be more of a buffer between industrial and residential, especially in such a low density setting.

This actually got me wondering, is a data center considered "industrial" for zoning purposes?

[toast0]

> It's certainly possible, though I wonder is building a data center like this significantly more "destabilizing" to the ground water than say building a housing development? Many folks have had massive housing communities built at high speed 1000 feet from their property and we haven't seen these sorts of stories about well issues with that (that I'm aware of).

I would think highly likely. Most housing developments are going to be wood framed buildings, maybe a couple heavy trucks. Otoh, a datacenter is going to be a lot of concrete, probably a bunch of HVAC on the roof, brought in with a crane. Maybe more digging because you probably want to put fuel storage in the ground; otoh, housing development where there's people on wells is likely to have digging for placing septic tanks.

> This actually got me wondering, is a data center considered "industrial" for zoning purposes?

Some municipalities have specific zoning for data centers, but I think it would generally fall under light industrial or warehouse zoning otherwise. Data centers can also fit in commercial, but it's not a great fit.