Data centers

@tflea That's a major topic of conversation here in Oklahoma there are currently 50 of them proposed and Tulsa is the primary hub in the state with over 30 of them, Google broke ground on a massive 506-acre facility near Owasso Ok in early 2026. Meta's got a 1-billion-dollar project underway in Oklahoma. The people of Oklahoma do not want them they can consume between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water per day under peak summer conditions.

@bodyboy : They reuse a lot of their water btw. Closed-Loop Systems: These advanced systems keep water sealed inside a continuous loop, recycling it repeatedly through chillers or heat exchangers to minimize waste.

What ticks me off is how Gov.Abbott invited all these data centers to Texas, with incentives/tax breaks....(and no doubt, more $$$ in his own pocket).
But now his election is coming up, he's pretending to put "guardrails". (he won't follow thru, of course).
Where the hell was that thinking when he was DEregulated them??

Remember when everything was going to fall apart when the clock hit 2000? Remember when Kodak would be out of business? People want progress until it happens I guess. I just read something interesting. " The technology often doesn't actually eliminate the underlying human desire. It eliminates or changes the old way of satisfying it."
The AI data centers is not going to stop in other countries. Stop it here and we just don't get things done as fast. Everyone else will be fast and we will still be reading 20 articles to try to educate ourselves when it could have taken 5 seconds to get the info and a few minutes to read it. Everyone on here is using AI. If you don't build centers you stop being able to serve the needs of those who use it. Everyone uses it, some of you just haven't figured that out yet.

During normal times there would be environmental impact studies, public feedback periods, permitting and such,
Current environment is that everything is for sale. They are pushing to build these as fast as possible to get them online before rules can be made to reign them in. Or the regulatory env has a change in tide, or before public pushback becomes organized enough to be a problem

I have to learn more about these massive closed loop cooling water systems that don't have water draws.
Cooling towers at refineries and chem plants serve the same purpose and are huge water loss points as well as pollutant emission points.It seems like if technology exists to cool and recirculate the water without the loss and environmental impact, those technologies would be incorporated into the petrochem industry to reduce or eliminate the cooling tower loss/pollution points.Have to research this.Pretty sure I don't trust either sides propaganda. And as far as stressing the power grid. Most of these plants are providing their own power,while still putting load on the grid (not over building on power production), but they will be very large consumers of natural gas, so when the ng rates rise due to market demand (home heating), these are contributors.There are somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 data centers planned or under construction in the United States.

It's clear that they are rushing to build them quickly before the public and surrounding neighborhoods have time to get informed and educated.
Not surprised to see them go to rural areas taunting it for "creating jobs" for those really desperate. But construction jobs don't last. And after that it'll just be a drain on water and electricity.
At the least, they should be forced to create 100% of their own solar power. Why should they get tax breaks instead of us??

@Andi7 :
There is a lot more to it than that, most of Oklahoma depends on Core of Engineers to manage the water system to most of the towns in Oklahoma a average size data center can use up to 5 million gallons of water a day most of the Core lakes has a surface area of approximately 4850 acres, an average small town in Oklahoma is on a average 39000, to 55000 thousand people those towns can knock out a lake very quick unless the get decent rain fall. A large Amazon data center is in the works close to lake Oologah Lake which is a lake that supplies power to Northeastern Oklahoma it is not large enough to supply water to both which they did not think about all they seen was cheap land, as the old farmers and ranchers die off the kids in most cases do not want nothing to do with it and sell it off.

Water heat exchangers basically the same as your cars radiator prevents water loss.Massive water consumption is initial fill.