The water bill alone would be only $100k/yr assuming average US domestic rate of $8 per 1000 gallons.

I think at some point someone used the argument of the spoon of water to say about the quantity, but I remember to see explanations that it was unrelated.

It is also interesting how much the anti-datacenter panic sounds like astroturf.

Traditional data centers have far smaller power density per rack and thus cooling requirements than AI datacenters; if you can use closed loop system without evaporation, water usage is very small. Difference is around order of magnitude

But if you want to fit maximum amount of compute in the space and need to dissipate it, evaporative based system will be far more effective space wise; especially if also for some reason you built it in hot place, rather than somewhere in the north

It'd be pretty easy for the company to dispel those outlandish accusations - the PR department could just report the true numbers.

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.