[_DeadFred_]

Everywhere I live water supply has been constrained. Where I live now gets a ton of snow/rain but we have entire subdivisions planned that can't get built because we don't have water hookup/infra capacity, not a shortage of water. Many areas have had water rights changes that have impacted ag/business/homeowners negatively, to the point people aren't allowed to drill wells on their property. And a lot of this is in communities with plenty of water but the water rights has been assigned 'downstream'.

And yet data centers don't seem to be operating under the same rules at a time when people have it shoved in their faces the techbro billionaires and their bought politicians don't have to follow the rules. That people can't get more housing built but somehow billionaires can magically get datacenters is going to cause resentment.

It doesn't help that data centers do everything in secrecy and then just break ground (because they don't want pushback) so it appears that they haven't followed any of the processes everyone else has to (specifically for limited/coveted/people have been waiting years water hookups). This is why they list the number of houses worth of water used. Because that number of housing could have been built instead or now can't be built without upgrading the municipal water system (at huge expense to the local community that already paid to build out the capacity the datacenters took for their remote billionaire owners' enrichment not local community benefit).