> If any region has a lot of freshwater and little potable water, the best way to make potable water more available and cheaper is to introduce a new large buyer, which will give the local utility enough revenue to upgrade and expand their treatment facilities. Saying that my data is misleading because Al "only uses valuable potable water" actually gets the issue backwards: adding demand for more potable water in regions with lots of freshwater makes potable water cheaper and more abundant for everyone else per unit.
1. That just because a region doesn’t have enough potable water to support humans and data centers, it also doesn’t have enough potable water to support the humans alone.
2. That the temporary increase in water prices due to the new demand of the data centers will provide enough revenue to upgrade its facilities
3. Even given enough revenue to upgrade its facilities, that the utility will choose to upgrade its facilities and increase demand
4. That the downsides of a temporary increase in water prices while new facilities are built is acceptable and will not cause suffering
5. Even after new facilities are built, that the cost of those facilities will be low enough and the increase in supply large enough that water prices for humans will be lower than they were originally, even with a large and wealthy new buyer on the market.
It doesn’t feel like a very strong argument to me.
Just as an example, Loudoun County has the most data center concentration in the world by a wide margin, and also has significantly lower water prices than the Virginia average. Seems like they've been able to build out huge new water capacity for data centers and that hasn't raised househould prices, or even kept them low. https://andymasley.substack.com/i/171855599/the-county-with-...
This part of his argument is not self evident or intuitive and I'm not convinced that the abstract economic model maps cleanly to the messy reality. I'm much more assuaged by the fact that it seems to cost ~$1/1000 gallons to convert fresh water into potable water.
Like, if agriculture uses fresh water and data centers use potable water, the important question is how hard it is to convert fresh water into potable water?
The answer seems to be "not very" so the difference is kind of moot
There's a bunch in there but this bit caught my eye in particular:
> The US public water supply uses ~40 billion gallons per day, all of this is potable. Data centers used 50 million gallons per day onsite in 2023. So their potable water usage was 0.13% of the public water supply.
That's a naive argument. Infrastructure construction timelines are typically measured in years and decades. You need to find the political will to do it and sufficient guarantees of long-term demand to justify the investment. And the work itself is often done in difficult environments, such as under major streets or on privately owned land that may already be in use.
In parts that do not care much about property rights and citizens are not allowed to challenge government decisions in the courts.
If I was trying to build new infrastructure in Finland, I would add four years to the project between the planning and the construction stages. Two years for urban planning and public hearings, and another two years for the inevitable lawsuits. Other Western countries should have similar delays.
Key quote:
> If any region has a lot of freshwater and little potable water, the best way to make potable water more available and cheaper is to introduce a new large buyer, which will give the local utility enough revenue to upgrade and expand their treatment facilities. Saying that my data is misleading because Al "only uses valuable potable water" actually gets the issue backwards: adding demand for more potable water in regions with lots of freshwater makes potable water cheaper and more abundant for everyone else per unit.