True if you're using a closed-loop system. But if you're using evaporative cooling (which is the main cause for concern) then the place where the water 'comes back into the environment' may be quite far away (at least in a useful sense).

20-25% of the water consumed for evaporative cooling becomes contaminated waste water. It is used to clean out the residue left behind by the 75-80% of the consumed water that is evaporated.

The contaminants consist of dissolved solids and minerals that were in the incoming water, plus additives such as anti-scalers, corrosion inhibiters, and antibacterials.

I think the bigger issue with water usage ( if it's actually an issue ) is when the system is not able to handle the additional demand ( drying up wells, etc. ) Especially during the summer where water supply is already strained in some areas.

Yes water goes eventually back into circulation but that does not help in the place where the system is already at it's limit

I would love to see a real breakdown of aquifer water usage.

IMO the water thing is a distraction. It gets people quibbling over water instead of asking bigger questions about the data center.

Your use of "into the environment" is too broad.

If you pump water out of one watershed into another, perhaps via evaporation and wind transport, then you better expect the downstream users, deprived of their water, to complain.

For example, the upstream users of water from the Colorado use so much that Colorado River Delta is nearly always dry. Or read about the California water wars.

Further, increased competition for surface water raises prices, which encourages additional aquifer extraction.

The water for the datacenter comes from the same place residents, farmers, etc get their water. If there is already not a lot of water, the datacenter can cause running out of water. Sending used water downstream doesn't magically reappear upstream.

That's wishful thinking, I know, but would love a breakdown of those metrics into what actually goes into AI inference, training versus just TikTok / YouTube streaming, or just a Google search...To have some perspective. My hypothesis that prolonged video streaming might contribute similarly to AI usage? (But CDN etc might make that tricky to calculate...)

It's not terrible at all. It's dwarfed by common municipal demands, let alone industry or agriculture. It's an amount of water that's basically not worth talking about.

Yeah, what have the Romans ever done for us?

It varies pretty greatly, but our golf course uses untreated water from a relatively dirty river that is not used for drinking. It looks like Google is using ground water from the aquifer. These are significantly different beasts.

Concern about water use is the distraction they caused in the media so we'd too busy thinking about fake issues to think about the real issues.

Historically large data centers used evaporative cooling. So the water disappeared in sense that it's no longer available in a useful form in it's original locations. That's changing with growing use of closed-loop systems.

A lot of people think it does, surprisingly. People memed too hard about "querying ChatGPT drains lakes" and anyone who contested it was deemed a booster, so it stuck.

no it doesn't but it doesn't go back to where it was taken from either. So it does affect local aquifers.