After two cities in the region denied the California-based AI data center recycled wastewater for cooling, it filed a lawsuit demanding to get water from the Colorado River for cooling. The 330-megawatt facility was not only designed to be the biggest AI data center in California, but it specifically committed not to use water from the Colorado River because it was promised wastewater. But now the owner of the data center is essentially asking to redirect water supply from agriculture to the facility.

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I guess we can all eat tokens instead and like it?

Company doing this:

Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing — the owner of the 330 MW AI data center

Lawyer heading the project:

Sebastian Rucci

From a different article linked below:

Rucci has so far sued government officials, the local utility, an activist and a public television station over the dispute. Several of those legal claims have recently been dismissed.

Prior to joining the data center push in Southern California, Rucci was charged, though not convicted, of money laundering and promoting prostitution in relation to his former Ohio cabaret; he ended up serving 30 days in jail for selling beer without a license. Rucci was not charged in the rehab center case, which prosecutors said focused on Medicaid billing issues.

“Just give me my damn data center,” he told the Journal.

therealdeal.com/…/southern-california-data-center…

But why won’t people just give him his damn data center?!

Sounds like a real prick deserving disbarment

*\dismemberment

Honestly, if a little vigilante justice were to occur in this case (and, well, a lot of related cases), I would read the article about any such event with great enthusiasm and enjoyment, and it would absolutely make my day.

This sounds like one helluva great guy.

Exactly the type of person I’d expect behind any AI initiative

The river that’s responsible for well over half of the food grown in the US that’s already seeing record low water? That river? Jesus fuck the entitlement and greed never fucking ends.

Exactly. I’m not sure why we’re even discussing this as a possibility. Duck that dude.

Duck that dude.

I think a goose would be more effective!

let’s not forget how the preservatives they add to the water to makes it “server compatible” basically poison it

What additives? If anything they want more pure water. Some systems use some part propylene glycol, but those are closed loop systems.

anti-corrosion

Pure water (deionized) is actually really bad for cooling systems because it will slowly dissolve the metals it’s in contact with. You definitely want Distilled water (organic content removed) usually mixed with a glycol to improve corrosion protection and lower the freezing temps, with the most common one being ethylene glycol which can contaminate food and drinking water and make it unsafe for consumption

The water they’re evaporating is not the same water flowing through servers. There would be a heat exchanger so that all the anti-corrosion additives stay in the closed loop side.

Any additives at all in the evaporative side would just get concentrated more and more as water evaporates. Pure distilled water would be ideal since there would be no residue to periodically clean, but at the scale they need it, they basically have to use lightly filtered river water as far as I know.

Absolute bullshit. A giant data center that nobody wants had promised not to use Colorado River water when it was planned. Now, they’d like to divert that water to cool their data center, closing farms and putting people out of work. If we as humans choose environment-destroying AI over food and people… what are we even doing!?

If we as humans choose environment-destroying AI over food and people… what are we even doing!?

The same thing we have been doing for so, so long at this point; choosing capital over life. Why would that suddenly change?

Equivalent usage to a farm, maybe. But it’s not a farm. Part of the challenge and conflict about these water rights is that actual farms have priority leases, lasting around 100 years. Cities can’t negotiate drinking water increases, because the farms have priority.

Data centers (and other industrial projects) are at the back of the line. They’re welcome to build their own pipelines, or truck it in, or build a desalination plant. But that river is already spoken for.