AIBU to question hosepipe bans while AI water use gets little scrutiny

What happens to all the water? Does it just vanish?

Hardly comparable.

Yes I saw that in an article in the Irish Times - compared with about 4% in the US. It's a massive issue. I don't know what the equivalent is in the UK, not sure we have many AI factories here due to Brexit and other things.

You can use a watering can to water your plants - nobody's lawn needs watering especially as it's going to rain soon anyway. Lawns might go yellow but they recover with the first rain.

However, it's a good point about AI. It does use a lot of water and energy (as do the data centres which store all our emails).

Business needs to get its house in order. It's a bit like having a go at women for using disposable sanitary towels when 97% of waste is created by industry.

However, refraining from using a hose isn't that difficult (and if you are disabled, you have an exemption from the ban anyway before anyone says "but I can't use a watering can").

Processing meat and other food also uses a hell of a lot of water, especially for "plant based" goods.

Of course there are legitimate uses of AI

https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/06/25/they-read-the-scroll-thing-ai-helps-decipher-ancient-document-charred-by-vesuvius/5262525

Slough, Berkshire, is home to Europe's largest cluster of data centres and ranks as the world's second-largest data hub behind Virginia, US.
A 2020 application by Equinix in Slough reported drawing 1.7 million litres per day for evaporative cooling towers.
A 2022 planning application for an unidentified Slough data centre recorded a demand of 2.1 million litres per day.

How can you possibly ignore the water usage of data centres..........are you somehow invested?

I agree with you OP. Of course there are legitimate uses of AI and it won’t go away now but I do think it’s irresponsible when people use it indiscriminately and unnecessarily and I don’t think that there is enough emphasis on this in the mainstream media.

Any hosepipe ban is a separate issue but I think you’ve already agreed on that .

I should have said "there are no "hyper scale campuses" consuming that much water in water strained areas in the UK."

I ignored it because there are no "hyper scale campuses" consuming that much water in water strained areas.

Generally speaking, water and electricity are miles too expensive in the UK for it to be economical to build the massive AI data centers running the latest highly energy intensive chips and requiring loads of water for evaporative cooling. Our data centers are mostly the old fashioned types which are cooled by glorified fans.

No. The UK and Ireland have some of the highest data centers globally. It’s because of our temperate climate. Data centers are strictly temperature controlled and our weather doesn’t get too hot (ok today’s not a great example) or too cold allowing for easier heating and cooling of the servers

Ah - point taken about the daily usage!
However you have totally ignored the other points about the concentration of their locations and Hyperscale ones especially.
A single hyperscale campus can consume between 1 to 5 million gallons (3.7 to 18.9 million litres) daily, rivalling the water footprint of a medium-sized town.
Simply comparing it to the overall UK water supply does not give a realistic view of the strain placed in some areas.

You are trying to compare annual data center usage against daily total water supply. You need to divide by 365. So 0.00465% is correct.

As pointed out earlier, the majority of our data centers use less water than a typical leisure center.

There is no hosepipe ban in Kent, it doesn't come into force until 3rd July.

The value of 233.44 billion litres represents 1.6674% of 14,000 billion litres (which is a massive increase over your original and also amended percentage).

Also, 84% of proposed UK data centres to be built in water stressed areas - so simply using a value of the total UK water supply gives a very unreal view.

The vast majority of UK data centres are concentrated in and around Greater London. London leads with around 154 facilities. The West London town of Slough (Berkshire) is considered Europe's largest single data centre hub, hosting 30 to 40 massive hyperscale facilities due to its proximity to transatlantic fibre cables.

I grow a lot of my own food I’m not prepared to lose my crop when Barb next door has a pool filled for her feet

The irony is that "AI" can be used to look at aerial photos to spot people who are watering their gardens ... fines to follow 😎

Interesting research reported in the Guardian (not sure if also reported elsewhere) about the heat impacts of data centres - residents of Slough talking about their experiences.

Even if those numbers are correct (no sources are given besides "it's our estimate") then data centers are still only using 0.00456% of our total water supply.

There are proposals for another 17 in Scotland, never mind the existing 22 already here.

The problem is a lot of that water just runs off and isn’t captured. Obviously it helps top up the reservoirs but it doesn’t help with agricultural use in a summer drought (not saying we have a drought, just in principle).

Yabu. Kent uses mostly aquifers to supply water. These filled up over winter to almost unprecedented levels.
Two heatwaves and the level of extraction used by AGRICULTURE to keep their crops alive is phenomenal. A county that has so much agriculture has almost zero infrastructure of reservoirs.
In the time I lived there we were shoveling three feet of snow to get out of our house..and we still had a hosepipe ban at the same time.
Its not AI. Its complete lack of management and investment.

United Kingdom data center water consumption market size in 2026 is estimated at 233.44 billion liters, growing from 2025 value of 214.12 billion liters with 2031 projections showing 359.34 billion liters, growing at 9.02% CAGR over 2026-2031.

Source: https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-kingdom-data-center-water-consumption-market

I hear a lot about how awful AI is environmentally, including the high water usage.

I have water butt and not a huge number of plants. No hosepipe involved. I realised the neighbours use a hosepipe to water their plants, though.