@davidgerard @Unixbigot @catsalad to put this number in actual perspective:
The annual rainfall in Florida is about 56 inches. USGS' calculator only lets you use 50.

So less than the annual rainfall in Florida is 46,596,264,000,000 gallons. Google is admitting to using 2,920,000,000 gallons per year before waste and losses.
That's over 6% of all annual rainfall. In FLORIDA.

That is more than enough to put aquifers into terminal decline.

(edit: yush math is wrong, I mathed pre-coffee.)

@jeffreyolivier @davidgerard @Unixbigot @catsalad yeah, doesn't surprise me, pre-coffee and thrown into Excel.
But it's a not insignificant number to say the least. NEORSD is one of the largest systems in the country and treats 200M gallons per day. A single Google datacenter *consumes* >4% of that. (The consume is important.)

So at 73 admitted data centers that's >584M GPD burned. I did the full math with other use but I think those notes are on the dead PC.

@jeffreyolivier @davidgerard @Unixbigot @catsalad a better comparison is probably this:

In 2020 the entire nuclear power industry withdrew (used) 42,045MG per day using the most pessimistic numbers. But actual *consumption* (loss) was 946MGD. Or ~2.2%. The remaining 97.8% is returned to the water table and a small portion of the 2.2% is evaporative.

73 Google data centers consume a minimum of 671MGD, or more than 70% of the entire nuclear power industry in the United States.

@rootwyrm @jeffreyolivier @Unixbigot @catsalad in practice with data centres, "returned to the water table" means "doing the minimum you can get away with before dumping it, down to nothing at all if you don't think you'll get caught"

just pumping the water back into the stream, but now it's contaminated and 40 deg C