'I can't drink the water' - life next to a US data centre

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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

Residents in rural Georgia say the data centre next door has disrupted their water supply.

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In my old house, we had gravity fed water from a nearby mountain stream. The whole row of houses on one system, with my house being the last. The guy next door decided to dig a well and ever since then my water stopped. Just a trickle and full of sediment like with this lady. He also claimed it wasn’t his fault. We ended up getting a tank to slowly fill with the trickle and give us enough water pressure to live. Before that it was buckets and an hour to fill up the bath for my son. We couldn’t afford to build the tank system right away. My heart breaks for all the people facing this issue now, with all these data centers popping up everywhere. It’s hard to understand unless you’re living it, but a disruption in water causes so many other issues in your house and life, that’s it’s like working a second job just to survive.

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“I can’t live in my home with half of my home functioning and no water,” Ms Morris says. “I can’t drink the water.”

She believes the construction of the centre, which is owned by Meta (the parent company of Facebook), disrupted her private well, causing an excessive build-up of sediment. Ms Morris now hauls water in buckets to flush her toilet.

She says she had to fix the plumbing in her kitchen to restore water pressure. But the water that comes of the tap still has residue in it.

I feel horrible for this woman and the people of this community.

Meta, however, says the two aren’t connected.

In a statement to the BBC, Meta said that “being a good neighbour is a priority”.

The company commissioned an independent groundwater study to investigate Morris’s concerns. According to the report, its data centre operation did “not adversely affect groundwater conditions in the area”.

It’d be helpful to learn more details about this independent groundwater study that Meta initiated, because its odd that this woman should be seeing residue in her water. I hope we learn more soon.

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It’d be helpful to learn more details about this independent groundwater study that Meta initiated, because its odd that this woman should be seeing residue in her water. I hope we learn more soon.

How could it be “independent” when it’s commissioned by a party with a giant vested interest in this study finding them not liable?

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That’s not precisely true. They have a vested interest in determining if they are likely to be found liable. A corpo would rather know about the liability so they could start bribing the appropriate officials make strategic campaign donations and quietly make the problem go away before it becomes more of a press problem.

Now, whether or not their press releases would ever admit to the liability being present? Lmao no.

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As AI grows, the challenge is clear: how to power tomorrow’s digital world without draining the most basic resource of all - water.

Easy! Just ditch the AI slop.

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It’s Erin Brokovitch again.

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Kyle Hill just did an excellent video on exactly this subject, very much worth watching.

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