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Message
re: Bessemer, AL data center would use 2 million gallons of water a day
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:38 pm to Dingeaux
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:38 pm to Dingeaux
quote:quote:
A smaller data center in Jackson County, Alabama uses more than 182 million gallons of water per day.
is this correct? 182 million gallons a day?
That seems like a lot. This is the Carrollton Water Treatment Plant (minus the high school football field) that serves the Eastbank of NOLA. It produces 110 million gallons per day.
0
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:40 pm to tigerfoot
Dude, you’re not getting $180,000,000 for your trailer park 15 min from the new holly ridge meta location 
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:42 pm to LegendInMyMind
quote:
2 million gallons of water a day requested by the developer is equivalent to the typical usage of around 6,700 households
Thats 300 gallons a day per household. Seems high
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:46 pm to LegendInMyMind
Hopefully they decline the build.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:47 pm to Chicken
quote:
can they recycle the water?
I would assume so. Plenty of people have water cooled computers. You would think this would just be on a much larger scale.
I’m assuming it’s much cheaper to just use water from the water supply and probably don’t want to eat the cost of setting up a system.
This post was edited on 7/22/25 at 9:30 pm
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:47 pm to LegendInMyMind
Where does the water go when done? So it won't be a closed loop but the water has to go somewhere right? They're not just dumping it into a underground storage tank never to be used again.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 12:52 pm to Wabbit7
Google's Council Bluff, which is reportedly the most advanced and "green" data center on the planet, used 980 million gallons of water in 2023. That "campus" encompasses 1,000 acres.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:00 pm to LegendInMyMind
Bessemer needs the money. This thing is getting built one way or another.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:01 pm to Alabama Slim
quote:
Bessemer needs the money
They should get a loan from my boy Jameis
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:10 pm to Mingo Was His NameO
As a Bessemer resident, a lot of us are royally pissed off at the lack of transparency. I moved here in between elections, so i can say I didnt vote for this, but it is gonna happen no matter what, and the general feeling is a lot of pockets got lined
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:12 pm to Mingo Was His NameO
As soon as he gets his free crab legs from Publix.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:33 pm to DownshiftAndFloorIt
quote:
That might well be the recovery amount for an open cooling tower setup.
ETA: A closed system for a data system would use an astronomical amount of electricity.
Yeah, I think you nailed it.
Let me go a little further, a typical cooling tower has 3% or less makeup water flow, relative to circulation. Usually less. So if the cooling tower has 1,390 GPM of feed water (2 million gallons per day), then the circulation rate is at least 46,000 GPM, maybe as much as double. That is a very large cooling tower, as large or larger than a typical chemical plant. And the heat it is cooling is huge, possibly in the neighborhood of a billion btu/hr. That is a shockingly huge number for cooling computers, to me anyway. If the site is large enough they may have boilers to produce steam to generate their own electricity. With a site like that you don't want to depend 100% on the grid. Steam turbines use a lot of cooling water in the condenser; that may be a lot of the needed cooling, maybe the majority. And water is needed as makeup for the steam generation cycle.
In any case, it's a BIG site.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:39 pm to LegendInMyMind
Sounds like some of the same underhanded bullshite going on in Northport with that water park/housing development. City council ran it thru, gave the developers total control. None will talk to the public about it.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 1:49 pm to Tigris
An average GPU in a data center puts off between 160-195°F of heat. Depending on the center, you're talking thousands of GPUs in a single site. They take a lot of power to run and a whole lot of water to cool.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 2:02 pm to Chicken
Meta is saying the massive one they are building in North Louisiana will use a closed-loop system...though I'v heard from others involved that may be BS.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 2:02 pm to Thracken13
quote:
general feeling is a lot of pockets got lined
For sure. That’s probably what pushed the NDAs.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 2:03 pm to Cosmo
quote:
can they recycle the water?
Probably, yes.
quote:
What is it for?
Supercooling data servers.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 2:04 pm to YouKnowImRight
quote:
That's like saying we should just stick to horses because cars use petroleum.
This is a terrible analogy. You weigh risks/rewards. There’s a major benefit to our society having cars. This data center? Who know? Apparently they aren’t telling anybody.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 2:16 pm to LegendInMyMind
quote:
Public officials in Bessemer, including its mayor and city attorney, have confirmed they’ve signed non-disclosure agreements related to the project, limiting the amount of information available to residents about the proposal.
Call me crazy but I don't think that matters to open records laws.This is county/city business and if they're doing that work, it should be getting done in official emails, paperwork, forms, meeting records, etc.
The people should file FOIA requests for the emails, writings, etc done by all of those officials and I hope that causes a breach of the NDAs where all those officials gets sued and go bankrupt for supporting this nonsense.
Posted on 7/22/25 at 2:38 pm to Mingo Was His NameO
quote:
All city council members have signed non-disclosure agreements, and there are a whole lot of unanswered questions around this.
This is Bessemer, Al. which is exactly the same as Birmingham, Al. which is the basis for the "Is them again Yogi" meme. This will be absolutely full of grift, and I will be surprised if the locals don't make off with a few million in materials shortly after ground breaking.
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