Outrage: Using Enormous Pipes Water Utility Didn't Know About, AI Data Center Guzzled 30 Million Gallons of Water for Free

Outrage: Using Enormous Pipes Water Utility Didn’t Know About, AI Data Center Guzzled 30 Million Gallons of Water for Free


An artificial intelligence data center was running up a water bill for the ages, and local residents were the ones to point out the problem.

In November, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Microsoft had a new “superfactory” named Fairwater spanning over 1 million square feet outside of Atlanta.

Chief Technical Officer Mark Russinovich explained why the site is so massive. “To make improvements in the capabilities of the AI, you need to have larger and larger infrastructure to train it,” he said in a statement.

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The site developer, Quality Technology Services, purchased the plot in 2022 for $154 million.

Ironically, Microsoft claimed the site uses a “closed-loop cooling system” that “consumes almost zero water” to operate.

According to a report by Politico, the issue wasn’t discovered until residents of a subdivision in Fayetteville, Georgia, started complaining that their water pressure was extremely low.

When the utility company looked into the matter,

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