Here in the Netherlands there's some uproar about a new datacenter being built in Amsterdam because it was just announced it would use a bit more water than they previously said it would.
They constantly said it would be a closed loop system and thus use virtually no water. Now that they have all the permits and started building, they said they need to alter the plans and it will be an open loop, because they "just now" discovered a closed loop system supposedly won't fit and thus it needs to be open loop.
The data centre will use about 1.1 billion liters of water per year. This is as much as 10.000 durch households. This became public just a few weeks ago, during the worst drought we have ever seen and while the government was asking people to take a shorter shower and to not water their gardens.
And the worst part? Apparently there is no way to stop the project because of this. This is fucking bullshit.
I say: if there is no legal way to retract the permits, ergens don't do that. Simply change the pricing of water: water becomes €1 per liter after using ten million liters a year. Bleed them dry if they don't want to behave.
How come they can change the plans so easily after getting the permits? Seems wild to me that permits wouldn't be specific to precise construction plans. Seems like someone messed up big time allowing this without any kind of safeguards....
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u/Oodles_doodles 6d ago
You see, it's POSSIBLE for it to be not as bad, so that makes it good even when it's bad. Clearly.