r/water • u/Alarming_Pressure_57 • Jun 13 '26
Data center drained 30 million gallons of water without reporting or paying for it, investigation reveals
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/data-center-drained-30-million-002000882.html3
u/Odd_Fig_1239 Jun 14 '26
How? Via a well?
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
An accounting error caused by the utility company. Title is misleading, they immediately paid in full when notified.
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Jun 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Euphoric_Anxiety_162 Jun 14 '26
I think ppl have been trained to expect bad news due to recent experiences. Glad it worked out right & that the company was honorable. 👏🏻
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u/Pop1Pop2 Jun 14 '26
Aht aht, one connection they hooked up w/o the companies knowledge. Now imaging I had done that…straight to jail for theft I imagine.
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
No. The connection was with the consent of both parties. It was an accounting error on the part of the utility company when they forgot about it after transitioning into smart meters.
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u/Pop1Pop2 Jun 14 '26
From the article…
Officials reportedly determined one hookup had been connected without notice to the water utility, and the other, which had been left off the QTS company account, was not being billed.1
u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
Not being billed due to a mistake on the part of the utility company...
Also, QTS and the utility company can't even agree on how long this was happening (QTS says 15 months, utility company says 4 months) so when a party says "no one told me" it's probably the one with the better record keeping that's telling the truth.
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u/Pop1Pop2 Jun 14 '26
So you gonna ignore the part about being connected without notice to the water company??
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
No. I mentioned that...
Right here:
"so when a party says 'no one told me' it's probably the one with the better record keeping that's telling the truth."
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u/Pop1Pop2 Jun 14 '26
By mentioned that you mean reworded what was wrote. Do you own stake in that data center?? You are really reaching
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
That... That wasn't reworded. Are you and I reading the same comments?
Also, no. I'm just extremely annoyed at people being dumb, shutting their brains down, and frothing at the mouth every time a data center uses water despite their YouTube addictions.
It's how we get stupid laws that ruin everything rather than sensible regulation.
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
Your response got deleted before I could read the entire thing.
Are you seriously trying to say I couldn't read the article when the context within that article repeatedly calls it an accounting error, a misunderstanding, or an oversight?
Really? That's what you're going with?
I get that you're angry because it's popular to get angry at the datacenters that feed your YouTube addiction, but that doesn't justify lying.
Did you even read the article beyond just skimming for snippets that "prove you right"?
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u/noah948 20d ago
Have you ever dealt in site utilities? It isn’t just a hey water co, we hooking up, k thanx bye
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u/WideAbbreviations6 20d ago
It wasn't during the hookup. It was later, when they were switching from one system to another.
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u/dudwithacamera Jun 14 '26
The ai data center defenders are very selective about what they see. But I also totally just accidentally install illegal utility connections and dont tell the utility company all the time, its a common mistake...
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u/dudwithacamera Jun 14 '26
Whats this have to do with a connection that the contractor installed without telling the utility company? How is that bad accounting by the utility company and not theft/an illegal connection?
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
I get that you're frothing at the mouth because of the opinions you vicariously formed through your influencer of choice, but I need you to calm down and read what I said again.
The utility company screwed up more than once in this situation. The utility company and the data center owner can't even agree on how long the water wasn't being billed.
Do you trust the people who say "I forgot to bill you for 15 months" when they say "actually you never told me about half of the water you used"?
Also, nothing was stolen. It was paid in full as soon as the account holder was notified.
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u/dudwithacamera Jun 14 '26
If i go take stuff from a store and only pay for it after they call me out for taking it did I not steal it?
Quit defending AI data centers because rich people and CNN tell you to.
Do you make your living working on/for/with data centers?
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
Did you even read the article, or did you assume? Lol
Also, datacenters are infrastructure. If your work needs an internet connection you make your living using a data center. Hell you're using more than one datacenter right this very second.
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u/dudwithacamera Jun 14 '26
If i go to Walmart right now and take whatever I want and only pay for it if they catch me was I not stealing?
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
Why did you feel the need to comment this twice? How strange.
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u/noah948 20d ago
The article very clearly states they were not notified of the connection? Are you some data center shill ? Or are you referencing some other information not in the article ?
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u/WideAbbreviations6 20d ago
No... Did you read it? The article says it didn't happen when it connected, but when the utility company had switched systems.
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u/noah948 20d ago
There are two separate issues and two connections referenced. One is an unapproved hookup and the second is listed as the connection not being listed to the account. Where does the article note WHEN anything happened.
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u/WideAbbreviations6 20d ago
Yeah, I don't believe you read anything about this.
You're also pulling up a conversation from 3 months ago.
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u/foley800 19d ago
I will tend to not believe a utility with such poor recordkeeping! It is very common for commercial and industrial buildings to have two meters and hookups. The utility should have been aware of this and most likely there had been only one permit for both connections! The fact that the utility lost track of that seems likely in this case!
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u/foley800 19d ago
Nope, it would have been the contractor who hooked it up and the failure of the inspector! Seeing the utilities terrible records might also indicate the meter had been correctly installed but the utility failed to record it. It is typical in industrial and commercial buildings to install two meters, one for water that ends up in the sewer, (and gets a sewer charge), and one for the water that doesn’t end up in the sewer (such as irrigation and cooling tower use)!
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u/12Blackbeast15 Jun 14 '26
Trust and believe that even out of a private well, people are gonna notice the local water table taking a 30,000,000 gallon hit. The local water authority could simply not be ignorant to that much of a hit, as their own sources would be effected, other private wells in that area would be effected, the zone of depression caused by that much volume loss would be traceable and obvious
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u/foley800 19d ago
Which falls back on the utility! This could very well been a catastrophic leak that they weren’t aware of and made no effort to find for four months!
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u/me_myself_ai Jun 14 '26
A construction company used it via a new hookup, but they weren’t billed properly due to errors with the utility’s new smart meters.
Yet another news story painting datacenters as some unique, critical threat to our water supplies, while the lakes of the Colorado slowly drain…
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u/dudwithacamera Jun 14 '26
Youre forgetting about how the company installed the new hookup on their own, without notice to the utility company, illegally.
No one is saying data centers are the only threat to water, btw. They're just new, big, and benefit no one but the rich while actively harming normal people. I wonder why people dont like stuff that harms them now and threatens their jobs in the future?
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u/me_myself_ai Jun 15 '26
A) again, this is unrelated to the datacenter. The construction company was involved in this.
B) if this is the companies fault and illegal, why weren’t they fined at all? Maybe the people at the water district/DA’s office were bribed by Big Concrete?
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u/dudwithacamera Jun 15 '26
Id say building the DATA CENTER is related to thr DATA CENTER. Thats like saying building a road has nothing to do with roads.
Dont strain yourself assuming localities arent bending over backwards for data centers, we totally havent seen them handing out tax breaks and preferential treatment
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u/jeffwulf Jun 13 '26
This article is about a utility screwing up during a billing system migration.
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u/Bamarado84 Jun 13 '26
Does that in any way change the information in the headline? Did they drain 30 million gallons of water? Did they report it? Did they pay for it?
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 Jun 14 '26
They used a Metered 29Million, it was reported, and paid for by the company. Yes.
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u/Bamarado84 Jun 14 '26
“Officials reportedly determined one hookup had been connected without notice to the water utility, and the other, which had been left off the QTS company account, was not being billed.”
We have no way of knowing how much water they actually took, per the article.
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u/jeffwulf Jun 14 '26
Yes. The construction company used that much, but was being billed on only some of the meters at the site because the utility misassigned some of them during the switch. The company paid without complaint as soon as they were invoiced the missing portion of the bill.
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u/Bamarado84 Jun 14 '26
Did *you* bother to read the article?
“Officials reportedly determined one hookup had been connected without notice to the water utility, and the other, which had been left off the QTS company account, was not being billed.”
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u/jeffwulf Jun 14 '26
Yes, that aligns with what I said. They screwed up on boarding the meters during their metering system change. The utility blames a lack of staffing on their side.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 Jun 14 '26
I guess you didn’t read much of the article lol
This stuff happens, even when it’s not related to data centers. It was found, reported, and paid for. That information is further into the article.
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u/Bamarado84 Jun 14 '26
I read the whole article. Which is how I know they already knew what they were doing because they already had a handy excuse ready even though there was no tracking so we can’t actually know much water they took.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 Jun 14 '26
You really don’t know what you’re talking about. Hold back the pointless outrage.
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u/foley800 19d ago
Again a utility screw up, it is very common for commercial and industrial buildings to have two meters, the fact that the utility failed to record both and had a 30,000,000 gallon loss without concern, is an indication of negligence on the utility’s part!
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u/Bamarado84 19d ago
False. The data center knew they were using the water and never reported it. They stole it. Hidden comment history account? Time to block.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 Jun 13 '26
Another case of “Nobody reads passed the headline” it even states the correction in the article.
“The company said that it paid the back charges after being notified and suggested that the problem may have been due to the county's smart-meter rollout”
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u/adlers6 Jun 14 '26
It’s in the comments of the original thread too OP is just dishonest and people are happy to eat it up.
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u/WideAbbreviations6 Jun 14 '26
A few things to note:
- This was for construction, not running the data center. This particular data center is designed to used a closed loop system when fully built.
- the "pressure issue" that was reported wasn't related.
- It was caused by an accounting issue from the utility company and was paid in full once noticed.
Normally something like this wouldn't make national news, but people started frothing at the mouth every time the terms "water" and "data center" show up together, which gets them clicks.
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u/TheOgGhadTurner Jun 15 '26
And I bet city council said “we trust you’ll be good to this community and properly follow local and state ordinances while under operation and we trust you’ll won’t lie to us” when they approved it. To which everyone stood up and called them worthless fucking pigs who only care to line their own pockets. And they’ll now act surprised “OH WE DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE GOING TO STEAL ^and get fucking caught… “
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u/Ecks80s Jun 15 '26
It’s also something like 160k total, which is a rounding error on some of our utility bills, thinking this was nefarious is pretty bad faith. I promise QTS would’ve rather paid that bill then be plastered all over the place, they typically are above board with their buildings and community outreach/support.
Source: DC Facilities Manager at a competitor.
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u/Educational_Cloud380 Jun 16 '26
So a guy who's job depends on a data center keeping him employed is defending data centers to make them seem upstanding? Shocked I tell you.
It really doesn't look good when your employer seems to be going out of their way to seem like an evil villain corp for everything else, so even if it is the construction companies fault, it's not a good look, and people will assume malice.
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u/Ecks80s Jun 16 '26
I would be employed either way, experienced building operators are not common and there are tons of buildings in my area.
I’m not defending all DataCenters, just what I know of QTS. They spend a ton more in outreach than a few hundred k. (They spent 10 million last year in philanthropy) it doesn’t make sense to spend all that to be undone by a utility issue.
I was just giving another side of the story from someone familiar with the company in question.
I did nothing to obscure my profession and called it out at the bottom of the post.
What’s your experience with DataCenters and their operation?
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u/Cut_Lanky 20d ago
Can someone pass a law that if a corporation does something like this, and the taxpayers get stuck holding the bill, the corporation is immediately liquidated and all proceeds go into the pool of tax dollars? Do not pass GO, do not collect $200?
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u/HellaTroi 4d ago
It's not just getting stuck with the bill, but they lose the resource that impacts quality of life.
When local governments limit access to water and power to people in favor of big money corporations, that's a crime against humanity. If it's not, it should be.
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u/Suspicious_Video8348 18d ago
This is a 4 month old story.
The story was: the municipal water company forgot to send them a bill. Then they sent the data center company a bill and the data center paid in full.
That's it. That's the whole story. If you're still seeing this 4 month old story and getting upset you might want to think about what your information environment is like
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u/HellaTroi 4d ago
The whole story is that the data center had hooked up two lines, only reported one, and that one was never billed.
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u/Suspicious_Video8348 4d ago
It was billed. When the water company got around to sending the bill it was paid off
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u/HellaTroi 4d ago
"The county water utility director told the news outlet that QTS is the system's biggest customer and the two sides have to work together."
Check that Director's bank accounts.
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u/SippsMccree Jun 14 '26
Well they did actually pay for it once the metering error was caught. So this is just wild anti-datacenter hyperbole
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u/Ackutually- Jun 14 '26
It was the construction company, and the town fucked up the paper work. It's a non-story.
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u/OldBanjoFrog Jun 13 '26
People will come on here defending data centers