
Google's controversial groundwater withdrawal sparks question - sushobhan
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/google-s-controversial-groundwater-withdrawal-sparks-question-of-who-owns/article_bed9179c-1baa-11e7-983e-03d6b33a01e7.html
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ryandvm
Water has an exceptionally high heat capacity, I get it. But using drinking
water to cool our servers (in the interest of seeing the very best ads) seems
like an exceptionally short-sighted choice for us to make.

If there is a less worthwhile thing for us to be doing with potable water, I
can't think of it.

~~~
kjksf
Economics beats morality. Making it about morality is counter-productive.

Water is a resource with a price, just like land or gasoline.

If Google had a cheaper way to cool their servers, they would.

If we have plenty of cheap water then we should use it to cool the server or
for watering lawns or whatever.

If the price of water is too low, then we should raise the price of water so
that it's cheaper for Google to use a different way of cooling.

If you make it about Google and cooling servers (and not about the price of
water) then you might win a battle but you'll still lose the war because
Google is only one of many entities that will eventually deplete water
resources if they are not priced properly.

~~~
michaelt

      Water is a resource with a price, just like
      land or gasoline.
    

I don't know about South Carolina, but as I understand it in the west of
America this isn't the case, as the heaviest water users are subsidised by
taxpayers.

For example, in California alfalfa growers pay $70 for an acre-foot of water,
while urban users in Los Angeles pay $1,000 per acre-foot. The growers use
34.1 million acre-feet a year, while urban use totals 8.9 million acre-feet a
year.

Needless to say, growers get very rich from this and make big political
contributions; if they had to pay market rate they'd all be out of business
pretty quickly. The political contributions work; voters widely support this
baffling state of affairs.

~~~
StephenConnell
California is a big state. Los Angeles is in a desert portion of the state. I
have not researched where alfalfa is primarily grown but that is important
information. You can see alfalfa test plots on this map are not in desert
portions of the state. You can also see how much of the state is not a desert.
[http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-images/variety_map.gif](http://alfalfa.ucdavis.edu/-images/variety_map.gif)

Buying in bulk is different than buying just enough to drink. A bottle of
water for $5 at a movie for example.

Maybe the price of water in LA primarily covers infrastructure, not water.
Their water does come from hundreds of miles away.

~~~
setpatchaddress
Nope. The water is largely coming through the same gross infrastructure. That
map is not an accurate guide to regions of the state where arable water is
directly available.

Water issues in the west are complicated.

------
rmason
It is not just South Carolina. My home state of Michigan probably has more
fresh water than just about any other state but it still has become a
political issue and not just in Flint.

Giant Nestle is pumping tens of millions of gallons in a rural Northern
Michigan county in exchange for a $200 yearly permit. Even though the promised
jobs never materialized they want to pump even more water threatening the
aquifer. The community and the state say no but Nestle is not backing down.

[http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/19/ne...](http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/19/nestle-
groundwater-michigan-great-lakes/100663218/)

~~~
acover
The total ground water withdrawal in Michigan [mainly for agricultural use] is
98,000 Million gallons [1]. Why is Nestle extracting 100 Million a problem?

[1]
-[http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdard/2015_MAEAP_Water_Use...](http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdard/2015_MAEAP_Water_Use_Reporting_Annual_Report_517569_7.pdf)

~~~
justin66
You're comparing the usage of an entire state to the demands placed on a
single aquifer.

~~~
acover
I agree. However that is not a price issue. Further the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality site specific review said it was okay.

I am genuinely confused why people think this is an issue.

------
cryptarch
Are there any "municipal heating" systems in the U.S.?

It's popular in NL, the idea is basically hot (~70 degrees celcius) water
being pumped from industrial areas (where it was used for cooling), to
residential areas for cheap heating.

~~~
droidist2
Yes, in New York City.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system)

~~~
cryptarch
Wow, so that's why I've seen steam so often as an element of the NY landscape!
Very cool, thank you.

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paraboluh
Why would anyone need to use potable water as a coolant, and why is potable
water completely ruined and transformed into grey water by its use as a
coolant?

~~~
homero
It needs treatment so it doesn't destroy the pipes

~~~
lucb1e
But it doesn't continuously need new water right? If I read the article
correctly, it's not just once to fill the cooling system. That's what I don't
get, seems hugely expensive and wasteful.

~~~
homero
It does to cool it, they put the heat into the ground. Nuclear plants
similarly usually use ocean water. Imagine using your tap water for water
cooling then it exits into the drain.

------
jsjohnst
Google is continually touted as the industry leader in efficient DC design,
yet they do wasteful operations like this. I just don't get it.

On the other hand, Yahoo is constantly shat on (sometimes validly), yet they
solved this years ago. Their Lockport, NY data center does not need air
conditioning because of its design and the cool local weather. It uses 50
percent less electricity and 99 percent less water compared with traditional
data centers.

~~~
jankey
We are industry-leading efficient, the water is used for evaporative cooling,
very efficient. Other sites use water from an industrial canal or cold sea
water.

Look here:
[https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal...](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal/)
. PUE globally is 1.06, compared to Yahoo/Cap Gemini Lockports 1.08.

(Disclaimer: I work in (another) Google datacentre.)

~~~
jsjohnst
Respectfully, please correct me if I'm wrong, but PUE doesn't take into
account water usage. So driving an extremely low PUE while wasting millions of
gallons of water per day to do so and then touting that as a win, feels rather
disingenuous to me.

I love how you use things like seawater in Finland and non-potable water
elsewhere, but don't claim this DC in SC is even remotely environmentally
friendly when to save on electricity and keep your PUE low, you are using
_millions_ of gallons of drinking water per day.

~~~
jankey
I was replying to the parent on Google not being industry leading efficient
and especially comparing to the Yahoo Lockport DC.

But you're right, regarding to water usage we don't publish numbers (nor does
anyone else afaik, I haven't found any WUE number for e.g. Amazon, Yahoo,
Facebook...) so it's difficult to compare this to others.

I am however confident that a lot of things have been considered and this was
the best option, we have imho a good track record trying to do the best for
the environment, a lot of attention is being paid to this internally. E.g.
everything running on green electricity, which is not the cheapest.

~~~
jsjohnst
I won't dispute you've had a good track record in the past, but past
performance doesn't predict future results, as evidenced here. I understand
and appreciate why you're doing it, but I can't simply accept you trying to
sweep this DC under the rug. If what the original story said is true, the SC
DC is an environmental albatross and you all should hang your head in shame,
especially based on past wins in this area. I can not share your confidence
that using millions of gallons of drinking water per day for cooling _" was
the best option"_ (unless of course you meant to add the words "to our opex"
after it).

------
phdp
I think the biggest question here is how can a public municipality sign an NDA
written by a private corporation?

~~~
anticedent
Yeah, the proper response here is:

    
    
      NO U
    

Especially when the entity requesting the valuable resource (water they don't
yet have permission to use), is the one prompting for the NDA.

Sorry, private corporation. Take your NDA elsewhere, and go swat at your lowly
job applicants with it, as they grovel for permission to waste their youth
away in your flourescent dungeons and air conditioned nightmares.

~~~
posguy
Seriously, people should be protesting out front of the DNR for signing an NDA
with Google over a request for public resources.

Imagine if I went to go build a house and demanded the county & city sign NDAs
covering all permits and plans for my building. They'd be having none of it,
esp. since I'm not a massive company like Google.

------
obstinate
"The price of tap water has risen faster than gold or real estate . . ." What
an odd pair of benchmarks. We don't expect the prices of either of those items
to rise particularly fast. What was the actual rate of increase in the price
of tap water? According to the Case-Schiller index, national housing prices
have roughly doubled in the last twenty years (I don't know if the index
accounts for inflation). That doesn't seem like an extraordinary rate of
increase for the price of tap water.

~~~
wyattpeak
Prima facie we don't expect them to rise fast, but they are probably the two
best-known things which have risen reasonably fast (at least in the popular
consciousness) in the past twenty-odd years.

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shawn-butler
How exactly is the amount of a public resource consumed by a private company a
"trade secret"?

What utter nonsense. Someone in SC should file a FOIA request on principle.

[http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t30c004.php](http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t30c004.php)

~~~
ericcumbee
see section 30-4-40(A)1

"Trade secrets, which are defined as unpatented, secret, commercially valuable
plans, appliances, formulas, or processes, which are used for the making,
preparing, compounding, treating, or processing of articles or materials which
are trade commodities obtained from a person and which are generally
recognized as confidential and work products, in whole or in part collected or
produced for sale or resale, and paid subscriber information. Trade secrets
also include, for those public bodies who market services or products in
competition with others, feasibility, planning, and marketing studies, marine
terminal service and nontariff agreements, and evaluations and other materials
which contain references to potential customers, competitive information, or
evaluation."

------
macinjosh
Pardon my naivety but I am curious why in use cases like this the same water
can't be reused? My car uses the same coolant over and over. While that is an
apples to oranges comparison couldn't the water be allowed to naturally cool
after use in a covered retention pond and then be recycled into the cooling
system? Is the water from the aquifer particularly cold to begin with?

------
tinus_hn
What happens to the water after it has been used to cool these servers? It's
not as if it's used up, right?

------
canadian_voter
Going to go ahead and recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's _The Water Knife_. And _The
Windup Girl_ is even better, but not on topic.

~~~
aaron695
The concept that water is so scarce that it's even rare for drinking never
gelled for me.

But I still enjoyed the book.

~~~
canadian_voter
I don't see it as a matter of absolute scarcity. In the book, drinking water
for the poor is scarce, but the upper middle class has access to fountains and
gardens, etc. If you think of it as a matter of control, it makes more sense.
If you're on the inside of the arcology, everything you need is provided for.
If you're on the outside, you're on your own. Resources are kept artificially
scarce for any number of reasons, but mostly to support the status quo.

------
revelation
Water is great for cooling, but who the hell dumps it afterwards?! I don't
think they quite understood what "water cooling" is..

~~~
ryandvm
They dump it because it's not cool anymore and nobody is wanting to buy hot
water from them at a cost that makes it worth their while.

If they had the capability to cool the water fast enough then they'd use a
closed loop cooling system and wouldn't need to pump fresh, cool groundwater.

~~~
revelation
Well, duh. If I had to pay nothing for water, I would also just run the tap
through a radiator all day and save on the AC electricity.

But then I also have a conscience and realize what a gigantic waste that is,
so I don't.

~~~
d-sc
This is basically how we cool our house in Montana during the summers. Cold
water is pumped up one well and hot water is returned down another well. It
uses much less electricity than a conventional AC system.

~~~
lucb1e
Wow. I've thought about this, using tap water to cool the house, but it's so
wasteful it was never more than a playful thought. But then the Netherlands'
summers are reasonably survivable even if they make me feel shit all day and
all night.

~~~
d-sc
At the end of the day, net zero water is 'used' it is all returned to the
ground.

Its actually a strong net water savings: the production of electricity in
Montana uses around 16 gallons of water per kilowatt hour.

