by tpmoney | 2025-07-15 02:30:00+00:00
It's certainly possible, though I wonder is building a data center like this significantly more "destabilizing" to the ground water than say building a housing development? Many folks have had massive housing communities built at high speed 1000 feet from their property and we haven't seen these sorts of stories about well issues with that (that I'm aware of).

I think this is something I find immensely frustrating with the NYT and major media these days. Even the most basic sort of follow up questions never seem to be asked by their reporters. We're told "500,000 gallons of water" can be consumed, but noticeably lacking is any information about whether or not this particular data center consumers that much water. We're told that they use "about 10%" of the county's daily use. But we're also told that a pending request for 6 million gallons is "more than the county's entire daily use". So for ease of numbers let's say that the county's entire daily use then is a nice round 5 million gallons. That would indeed put the data center usage at 500,000, but if that's the true number, why not say that? Also the article starts by telling us that "Months after construction began in 2018" their well problems started, but the end of the article tells us that Meta bulldozed the forest by their house in 2019, and that their troubles started after that. The article also says that while construction began in 2018, the facility wasn't finished until last year. Even if the facility is consuming 500,000 gallons of water a day today, there's no possible way it was dong that "months" after construction started if construction only finished last year.

Also, if Google satellite imagery is to be believed, the part of the property that Meta built on near their home only just started getting cleared in 2019, and was still just clear cut land and dirt roads in April of 2021. Buildings started going in sometime between that time and February 2023. In late 2019 when they were already replacing appliances, the nearest heavy construction on the data center property was a half a mile from their property.

Of interest is that in that same area, just south of the new data center is also a brand new (as of 2022) water reclamation facility. A facility on which construction started in 2020, but for which there was already an existing pumping station and plans for work there had been in the works since around 2005. (https://www.covnews.com/news/new-newton-water-reclamation-fa...). Again if google satellite imagery is to be believed, work on that pumping station looks like it started in 2013 sometime, and ground breaking and clearing for the new expanded facility also started in 2019. Did that cause problems with the ground water? It seems like it treats water and discharges out into the river basin so maybe not? But also seems like the sort of thing a reporter might want to follow up on.

None of this is to dismiss the very real problem these people are facing, but at the same time, this reporting is frustratingly vague about both A) what the actual timeline of events and proposed mechanism of action is and B) any external evaluation of those claims and examination into other possible causes.

> I'll say that it's pretty shocking that a data center was built so close to at least one home. I'd expect there to be more of a buffer between industrial and residential, especially in such a low density setting.

This actually got me wondering, is a data center considered "industrial" for zoning purposes?