@OliverHeldens - Since you think data centers can only add value and improve local communities

This is a closed-loop water system that managed to contaminate the city water system at 2 water reclamation plants in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It pushed both water plants offline and it will be a multi-month effort to clean it up.

The Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities has announced that the city will no longer be accepting industrial wastewater from its closed-loop data center cooling system after detecting a rare bacterium in the city’s reclaimed water plants.

The bacterium was detected after Goat Systems LLC—responsible for the construction of Meta’s Cheyenne campus—discharged waste water into Cheyenne's sanitary sewer. Testing then identified the bacterium Cupriavidus gilardii had contaminated the plant, with the board recently naming the Meta data center as the source of the contamination.

Two water reclamation plants were pushed offline, with a multi-month cleanup operation taking place. Goat Systems originally had its water discharge privileges revoked in late March, ahead of the wider ban against other Cheyenne data centers.

Meta contaminates water reclamation plant

The contamination occurred during a fill-and-flush operation for the closed-loop cooling systems on the campus. This cleaning method flushes water through the pipework used to cool datacenters in order to remove debris and contaminants, before the system is filled with cooling liquid and sealed.

The reclaimed water was then routed through to the city’s sanitary sewer by Goat Systems. According to Frank Strong, the Board's engineering and water resource division manager, the source of the bacterium remains unknown, but the water used to flush the system was purchased directly from the Board.

The contamination incident has brought to light new concerns surrounding how water treatment plants can handle the industrial wastewater from data center construction projects. Many closed-loop systems used chemicals such as propylene glycol as an antifreeze agent, but many water reclamation systems are not able to handle the filtration of these and other chemicals.

Moreover, the water treated by the city of Cheyenne’s reclamation plants is reused to water public green spaces such as parks and golf courses, raising further risks that Cupriavidus gilardii could cause human infections if aerosolized.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/a-very-very-unpleasant-surprise-meta-forced-to-halt-data-center-water-discharges-after-polluting-citys-water-reclamation-system-with-resistant-bacterium-shutdown-and-cleaning-of-two-water-reclamation-plants-expected-to-last-months

I doubt anyone 20 years ago could have predicted that we would have to live with contaminated water and higher hydro bills just so the government could run mass surveillance on us

Oh wow who could have predicted this would happen?

Ah yes, a good old closed loop flush. They either added new pipes and fouled the loop with (iron, welding slag and or oils), causing the need for a flush and or the water treatment is poor and the bacteria colonies grew out of control to the point where a dump and flush was needed. I do this for a living and have flushed and dumped hundreds of loops into sanitary sewers.

No idea why a naturally occurring bacteria that will be used for reclaimed irrigation water is causing such an uproar. Everyone knows don't inhale reclaimed water, it even smells bad, at least in Florida. Also, they cannot "trace it back to META data center". The city did their morning sampling, found above range results, contributed it to their discharge and confirmed by reading a meter. Unless they capture and isolate META's discharge in a holding tank they cannot contribute water based bacterium to a single source. ANd even if they hold it in a tank, now its stagnate water and whatever grows in it isn't METAS problem. In fact, once it hits the cities pipes it isn't METAS problem in terms of what grows. This seems like a hit job to cause uproar in "drinking water quality".

Just be happy they aren't doing open loops with cooling towers. That would be 100x the water usage and chemicals with constant discharge into sanitary.

Not pro data center, just insight on this case.

Lol, this is some obvious bullshit fake news. If you don't smell bullshit just reading the title, I'm not confident in your ability to correctly navigate through life.

The fact of the matter is, you should want a data center in your commuinity. They are building a large one in my area, and it was just revealed that they will end up paying between $150-200M per year in various property taxes once complete.

Do you really not want an extra $200m per year injected in your community? The only cost is letting them build on some vacant farm land that nobody cares about.

LOL

LOL INB4 it goes right to paying for illegals/entitlement benefits.

It's going to local government in property taxes, so it will be spent on the same shit that everyone's property taxes are spent on.

Generally, if they're trying to implement programs to send to illegals, they have to put it on a ballot(with some deceptive language to obscure what is happening).

That might be true where you live, but not everywhere. You give cities in CA an extra 400 million in revenue and guess whats its going to fund..

Oh trust me, my county does the same shit. They just voted to put something on the ballot in November to give healthcare to illegal immigrants. However, the language is very deceiving, as you need to do some deductive reasoning to figure out that it only covers people who cannot qualify for Medicaid and Obamacare(although a tiny bit of the funds are for "assisting people to get care through those programs". So naturally, the vast majority will go to fund health insurance for people who can't quality for any government programs(because they do not qualify for the programs).

They should just be running water or salt water to cool these things instead of using an automotive like coolant

or not build these things at all

They are all getting massive tax breaks. We don’t need them. Technology sucks now anyway.

It all needs to be burnt to the ground.

They using glycol?

thats what it says in the OP, propylene glycol

Big ass cooling towers and chillers, couldn’t imagine what they draw on power on just cooling these places. They are building one at the old coal plant near me, tax free plus tons of incentives. They get to hook up to a NYPA power line for cheap ass power too meanwhile NYS said we all need to turn our thermostats up to 78 to save the grid. I wonder how much hochul made in back door deals

It'll be going straight into the politicians pockets

They should use the coom and tears of INCELS on here and reddit to cool these fkn things down. (or any Floridian)

Capitalism has reached the point where we keep getting shit we never asked for and would like to reject and will be enthusiastically used to our detriment but we are forced to pay for anyway.

LMFAO at this idiot

More money into local government = more unnecessary spending and hand outs because they cannot control themselves = more inflation = marching further into economic disaster

But it's ok, we get memes

Yet more attempts to murder people as if these motherfuckers did this "accidentally" or not knowing about this, they were hoping it would fly under the radar to depopulate the peasant cunts who are to be replaced with AI in the VERY near future