[beloch]

This is one of the data centres that went to the extra expense of building a closed loop cooling system that would, supposedly, not waste water on a continuous basis. Apparently, even these are not so clean to set up. Governments are going to need to start paying more attention to the commissioning process apparently.

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"Meta said that it's supporting its general contractor, Fortis, which stopped discharging and began hauling wastewater offsite"

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Governments should also watch where this wastewater is being hauled to, and likely just dumped.

[andrew_lettuce]

This closed loop system needs to be filled and flushed, which is the operation discussed in the article. The bacterium was described as a possible airborne hazard if used for irrigation, it's not a regulated substance though so dump and dilute might be perfectly safe.

[beloch]

Might be. Might not be. To put it another way, would you want this waste water diluted and dumped in a lake you swim in or a river you fish in without proper study and regulation?

[AnthonyMouse]

> To put it another way, would you want this waste water diluted and dumped in a lake you swim in or a river you fish in without proper study and regulation?

Are you going to apply the same standard to every house with a swimming pool, every municipal storm drain that collects rain water having passed over the ground in nature where there are untold strains of bacteria and every other system handling thousands of gallons of unfiltered water?

Otherwise it's an isolated demand for rigor.

You can tell that something has an ulterior motive when the rule or its enforcement special cases the doing of a generic thing only when it's being done by the people being targeted.

[watwut]

> Are you going to apply the same standard to every house with a swimming pool, every municipal storm drain that collects rain water having passed over the ground in nature where there are untold strains of bacteria and every other system handling thousands of gallons of unfiltered water?

All of those are regulated and studied.

[AnthonyMouse]

If by "regulated and studied" you mean there are some laws that people regularly pay no attention to and aren't even aware exist, and some random sampling of a minuscule proportion of storm water for a minuscule subset of possible contaminants, and not even that much in many jurisdictions.

[watwut]

People dont need to pay attention, because when you buy a pool or pool chemistry, it already follows applicable regulations. The companies doing the work also know them.

> some random sampling of a minuscule proportion of storm water for a minuscule subset of possible contaminants

The whole point of random sampling is to ensure you need as miniscule amount of water as possible. These tests checking likely polutants is also not a bad thing.

Are you claiming these pools are massively poluting water? Or are you just angry that potentially large polutants are not allowed to just do what they want?

[baranul]

Apparently, other people's quality of life and health are of little to no concern in comparison to company profits, after they've paid off the correct politicians.

After all, the executives of the company (the important people) know not to swim in that lake (their swimming pools are clean) nor drink the water (as they can drink Perrier bottled water).

[anon7000]

Not sure why you got downloaded, but you’re right. Polluting public (and even private!) spaces is philosophically speaking a property rights violation, which is a core libertarian/free market value.

So why the fuck are we in the habit of giving companies the benefit of the doubt on this? Companies always follow the financial incentive. There is rarely a financial incentive to not pollute and always a financial incentive to spend less money on costly processes that slow things down, so they’ll pollute every chance they can. It’s just a side effect of how capitalism works.

So yes, if you actually care about your property (including public property in your town!), you absolutely need to push for more oversight. Companies have absolutely zero incentive to do it themselves, as evidenced in this scenario where the town “caught them in the act” so to speak.

And I’m not saying this company was doing anything deliberately malicious, but it takes the town being on top of their wastewater management processes and doing a solid root cause investigation to even find out this was happening. That doesn’t happen unless people care. A company has no incentive to do it themselves.

[benjiro29]

> why the fuck are we in the habit of giving companies the benefit of the doubt on this

Because companies pay for lobbyist, give donations, and other perks to politicians. Simple as that ... And companies a a-political, they simply give money to both sides, so who is in power has less effect.

While you the normal voter, only matter a few times, and with increased irrelevant as how powerful your vote is.

The fact that companies can now vote in local elections (in some states, you can guess the states colors), tells you how deep the corruption has gone.

[hamdingers]

> began hauling wastewater offsite

They towed it outside the environment.