Peter Moore Maps Data Center Water Addiction and Rehab Steps

"Data centers have a doozy of an addiction to water."

Peter Moore says so. He’s not mincing words. The special contributor to The Colorado Sun sees a drinking problem that threatens the Western Slope’s fragile supply.

Five ways these cavernous structures gulp water. Water-cooled chillers keep wires from melting. Enormous swamp coolers act as hothouses, keeping air below "Hades-level." Free-cooling systems use outside water to cool inside air. Liquid-cooling systems circulate water through computer equipment to prevent molten silicon.

They tax the air-conditioning in neighboring homes, too. Moore notes those neighbors’ AC units work harder, heating up by 4 to 18 degrees because of the hot breath from our data addictions.

The numbers are staggering. A proposed new data center in Denver estimates it will use about 805,000 gallons of water per day. It would take your household 4,25 days to gulp that much. If the heat isn’t making your head swim, those numbers should.

Tech apologists argue these figures are dwarfed by agricultural uses. Fair enough. But Moore asks the hard question: Which do you need more? An AI-generated article filled with half-truths about Japanese cooking history, or actual food on your table?

"Din din," he writes. "For the win."

There are 57 thirsty data centers in our neighborhoods. There are 6 million Coloradans who can’t slake their appetite for AI. We are all data drunkards, chugging artificial intelligence like Coors Light.

Moore has adapted Alcoholics Anonymous’s "Twelve Steps" to sober us up. The steps are clear. We admit we are powerless over our data usage. Our lives are unmanageable because of it.

We believe a Power greater than ourselves — Moore points to Elon, really — can restore us to sanity. We turn our lives and servers over to Jeff Bezos, Lord of Amazon Web Services.

We encourage chatbots to take a searching and fearless moral inventory of our lives. We admit the exact nature of our data usage to AI, to ourselves, and to another human being.

We are entirely ready for A.I. to remove all these defects of character. We humbly ask AI to bless our web browsers.

We make a list of all water sources we have harmed. We are willing to make amends to all.

The short version: Data centers consume water we don’t actually have right now. The current systems are egregious. They tax local grids and local aquifers alike.

Moore doesn’t just list the problem. He offers a path to rehab. The twelve steps are specific. They target the 57 centers and the 6 million users.

Worth watching is how local governments respond. Will they tax the water usage? Or will they let the tech giants continue their "outrageous" consumption?

The proposed Denver center’s 805,000 gallons per day is a benchmark. It’s not an abstract number. It’s water pulled from the ground to keep our servers cool while we scroll.

Moore’s tone is skeptical but constructive. He doesn’t hate technology. He hates the waste. The free-cooling, the liquid-cooling, the swamp coolers, they all drink.

Neighbors on the Western Slope feel the heat. Literally. The air-conditioning systems in their homes struggle against the hot breath of data centers.

The question isn’t whether we need AI. The question is what price we pay for it in water.

Moore’s steps are a start. They require us to admit our powerlessness. They demand we make direct amends to wasted water sources.

It’s time to check into rehab. The data centers are ready. Are we?