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The story
A new study reports that roughly a quarter of major data centers are already built in regions prone to water scarcity. Data centers consume huge amounts of water to cool the heat generated during operation, and much of it evaporates, making it hard to simply reuse for other purposes. In a 5ch thread, some suggested building on uninhabited islands or relying on well water or Yamanashi’s subsurface spring water, while others countered that “you need to be close to power, water, and communication cables, so in the end you can only build where people already are.” Others pointed out that in Japan, the strength of agricultural water rights and regulated electricity pricing both affect how easy it is to build data centers.
The Water Scarcity Risk of Data Centers Is Worse Than You’d Think | Gizmodo Japan
Nov 12, 2026 13:30 By Masahiro Hiraki
What happens when the water used to cool servers runs out?
Source: pubs.acs.org / Original article here
What people said
Not without massive freshwater infrastructure already in place.
No, that won't work.
It's too far from where the data is consumed and where the power comes from, so the water wouldn't accumulate there.
Actually it could work
if that uninhabited island already had a power plant running properly.
The thing is, today's data centers are built on the assumption that they'll piggyback on existing infrastructure.
also being built with zero coordination,
and the government still isn't doing anything about it, as usual.
Data centers in Japan are less likely to become a problem than in America.
Japan already gets a lot of rainfall to begin with — water shortages basically only come up when Udon Prefecture (Kagawa) runs dry in summer.
Electricity is tightly regulated, so even if companies expand their facilities, they can't pass the cost on to consumers.
There's barely any country where you could build this many data centers without causing problems for residents — Japan is almost perfectly suited for data center construction.
Heck, the government even hands out subsidies for it.
They're American companies, so no one's brave enough to regulate them.
In Inzai City, even the area right in front of the train station has become data centers.
My area's water supply comes from underground, and it's never once run dry.
Go move to the countryside.
That's nothing compared to the volume data centers actually use.
It's ice cold.
So that means Yamanashi or Shizuoka, huh.
Yamanashi's got nothing going for it but Takeda Shingen anyway, so this could be a whole new industry for them.
Beverage makers already have that water locked down there — doubt they'd get a building permit.
There's a lot of pushback against this overseas — Japan needs to start pushing back too.
Kagawa Prefecture, which has water shortages, got picked for the GX strategy…
People only object because they're trying to use drinking-quality water.
If it were somewhere like Fukushima, or some spot flowing with mine-tailings-contaminated undrinkable water, nobody would complain.
It's just warmed-up water, right?
Why does it turn into "there's not enough" or "people are fighting over it"?
It evaporates.
Ever heard of latent heat of vaporization?
Asia gets relatively heavy rain and regular typhoons, so if anything flooding is the bigger worry.
Europe has droughts severe enough to dry up rivers, which is why it's become such a big environmental issue there.
In America's case, they rely on groundwater, and the rules let the wealthy monopolize it, which is why it turns into a fight over supply.
In Japan, agricultural water rights are just too powerful.
The cables need to connect to where data is heavily consumed.
When you factor in power, water, and cabling, they end up having to build them in or near cities anyway.
The reason data centers in America look like they're out in the countryside is just that the land is dry and dotted with single-family houses.
Cities are already getting hit with lawsuits, so they probably can't build there anymore.
Turns out Ohio… was the city all along!!
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Evaporative cooling towers are widely used to cool data centers, and the water they draw in evaporates into the air, meaning it can’t simply be returned to its source after use. This is the point thread posters were making with the term “latent heat of vaporization” — in regions already suffering severe water scarcity, any new water use tends to become a flashpoint. On the other hand, since Japan gets heavy rainfall and electricity prices are hard to move due to regulation, many in the thread felt that the kind of fierce competition over water and power seen in America is unlikely to happen there. That said, agricultural water rights remain powerful, and even if companies try to build near water sources like Yamanashi or Shizuoka, they may well need to negotiate with existing users such as beverage manufacturers. The thread doesn’t clarify exactly how the original ACS study being cited determined which regions count as “water-scarcity prone.”
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Roughly 1 in 4 data centers is built in a region prone to water scarcity.”
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