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

[MariaMagdalenaa]

AIBU to think it’s ridiculous that there is a hosepipe ban and I cannot water my plants in this heat whilst I see hardly any discussions or questions raised about the massive drain on our water resources by AI?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 .

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?

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

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

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").

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.

Hardly comparable.

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