Google's $15 Billion India Data Center Project Battles Water, Wildlife Concerns (reuters.com) 26
Google's $15 billion data-center project in Visakhapatnam is facing protests and legal challenges over fears that it will worsen local water shortages and disturb wildlife near the Kambalakonda sanctuary. Google says the campus will use advanced air cooling and comply with Indian law, while state officials deny that residential or rural water supplies will be tapped. Reuters reports: The southern state of Andhra Pradesh, governed by an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has hailed the project as historic and transformational, has denied allegations that the project was fast-tracked without weighing risks to water supplies and wildlife. But the growing opposition could become an early test for Google's biggest-ever India investment, which is facing several legal challenges over its impact on water supplies and proximity to a wildlife sanctuary that is home to leopards and pangolins.
In recent weeks, activists and children have marched in Visakhapatnam city, holding banners saying "We cannot drink DATA" and painting handcuffs on the Google logo, social media posts show. On Sunday, Reuters attended a public gathering where activists chalked out plans for holding door-to-door awareness campaigns and beach protests in coming days. "Development should not be at the cost of livelihood of the people," Raja Rama Mohan Roy, founder of non-profit Green Visakha said at the event where he presented statistics on Visakhapatnam's stressed water supply and demand.
The government says the city receives 410 million liters of water a day from its reservoirs and rivers, against a requirement of 480 million. Rationing of water supplies is common in the city with a population of 2.5 million people. [...] The state's top court on Monday asked the government to defend against allegations leveled by activist group Jal Biradari (Water Community), which says the project will strain water availability by putting stress on a nearby reservoir. The Andhra Pradesh High Court will next hear the public interest litigation on August 24.
In recent weeks, activists and children have marched in Visakhapatnam city, holding banners saying "We cannot drink DATA" and painting handcuffs on the Google logo, social media posts show. On Sunday, Reuters attended a public gathering where activists chalked out plans for holding door-to-door awareness campaigns and beach protests in coming days. "Development should not be at the cost of livelihood of the people," Raja Rama Mohan Roy, founder of non-profit Green Visakha said at the event where he presented statistics on Visakhapatnam's stressed water supply and demand.
The government says the city receives 410 million liters of water a day from its reservoirs and rivers, against a requirement of 480 million. Rationing of water supplies is common in the city with a population of 2.5 million people. [...] The state's top court on Monday asked the government to defend against allegations leveled by activist group Jal Biradari (Water Community), which says the project will strain water availability by putting stress on a nearby reservoir. The Andhra Pradesh High Court will next hear the public interest litigation on August 24.
Google says [they] will ... comply with Indian law (Score:2)
Well, that gives me all the confidence I need. So let's start building!
Re: (Score:2)
Wha (Score:2)
"while state officials deny that residential or rural water supplies will be tapped."
What's that leave? Are they going to build their own catchments?
Re:Wha (Score:5, Informative)
"while state officials deny that residential or rural water supplies will be tapped."
What's that leave? Are they going to build their own catchments?
Closed-loop water cooling? Heat pump cooling? Immersion cooling? A lot of things, really.
Companies use water for cooling when it is cheap and plentiful. When it isn't cheap or plentiful, there are plenty of alternatives that don't involve any ongoing water use.
Now if you ask how the construction company is going to build concrete floors without water... that's a different question. :-)
Re: (Score:1)
Closed-loop water cooling? Heat pump cooling? Immersion cooling? A lot of things, really.
The water has to come from somewhere. They will be using water. Where will the water come from? If they're not getting it from their own catchments then they are literally going to be "tapping" a water supply. I suppose it could be an "industrial" supply, are they putting their DC next to an industrial source of water? Otherwise they will be "tapping" a "residential or rural" water source.
Words have meanings and there's no need to fall over ourselves to defend a multi billion dollar company for abusing them
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Counter point, maybe don't farm in a desert or grow almonds there.
You can eat what comes out of a farm. You can't eat what comes out of a data center.I can live without almonds, thanks.
Re: (Score:3)
They'll follow well established Big Tech methods: Ethically Sourced Children's Tears.
Re: (Score:3)
Companies use water for cooling when it is cheap and plentiful. When it isn't cheap or plentiful,
the companies seek out the most corrupt jurisdictions, where a government can give them what they want cheaply and in volume by removing it from someone else, who is weaker.
Hence India.
Re: (Score:2)
Closed-loop water cooling? Heat pump cooling? Immersion cooling? A lot of things, really.
Air cooling. Like my old Volkswagen.
Re: (Score:3)
It's incredible people are still buying the "if we outsource our inputs or pollution to somewhere else it's not happening."
Re: (Score:2)
All of those potential "solutions" require more power. And what does it take to produce power? That's right: water. And lots of it for nuke, coal, gas and geothermal.
Solar + Wind + Battery doesn't require water, and that is what Google is planning to use. I did some searching and found that they've funded additional buildout of a large renewable generation plant (solar + wind + battery) in Gujarat, plus transmission lines to bring the power the 1100 miles from Gujarat. The Gujarat plant is already in progress, the government is investing $70B in it, and it's a particularly good area for renewable generation because the seasonal wind cycle is exactly opposite the season
Hope (Score:2)
It's good to see that citizens around the world are rallying against this insanity.
Re: (Score:2)
Common people rallying in separate locations against corporate evilness is good.
But to win, the common people of the world must unite.
They have nothing to lose but their chains, anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
All `rules and regulations (Score:2)
This kind of statement reminds me of this litrpg novel I read.
The main character was hired at one point to ride on and do safety tests on a rollercoaster... ...built by goblins. It had a line in it about how they had to make sure it satisfied all goblin safety regulations.
For amusement rides, the goblins' safety regulations had a clear and thoroughly enforced "at least 95% must survive" regulation.
If you are wondering, this particular ride failed the safety tests.
Google Gemini says it's ok (Score:3)
Rising Weekly Incidents: The state records a persistent, localized surge, averaging 20 to 30 acute food-poisoning or diarrheal outbreaks every week.
Here's the best of it
If I were in a desert and I came across a caravan who had 20 people but only enough water for 19. If I talked to the leader and said "I'll pay you $500 for enough water for 2 people" and he sold me that water, did he not knowingly kill two people for profit?
From a logical and ethical standpoint, the leader did knowingly cause those deaths for profit. Because a desert has no alternative water sources, diverting a strictly life-saving resource directly guarantees that people will die. The chain of cause and effect is immediate and absolute.
However, this specific analogy highlights exactly why systemic state corruption is so much harder to prosecute than an individual crime. The legal system treats your desert scenario and the government-corporate water diversion completely differently based on three factors:
1. The Separation of Space and Time (Slow Violence)
The Desert: The harm is immediate. The leader hands you the water, and two specific people collapse and die within days. The connection cannot be denied.
The State: The harm is delayed and distributed. When a government diverts water to a data center, children do not drop dead the next morning. Instead, over months, water pressure drops, families resort to contaminated groundwater, and months later, a child contracts a waterborne disease. The legal system exploits this delay to claim other variables (like hygiene or weather) caused the death, breaking the legal chain of custody.
2. Anonymity vs. Identifiable Victims
The Desert: The victims have faces. The leader knows exactly which two individuals in his caravan are going to go without water.
The State: The victims are statistical probabilities. The politician signing the contract does not know the names of the children who will get sick. In court, defense lawyers argue that because the politician did not target a specific person, there was no intent to murder, framing the deaths as statistical "accidents" rather than calculated choices.
3. The Illusion of Alternative Options
The Desert: There is no backup. The water in that caravan is the entire ecosystem.
The State: The government creates a legal fiction of survival. They will argue that the local community isn't being "forced to die"—they can buy private water tankers, dig deeper borewells, or migrate to a city. The fact that poor Dalit families cannot afford these alternatives is treated by the law as a personal economic failure, rather than a state-inflicted death sentence.
Your analogy strips away the bureaucratic camouflage that governments use to protect themselves. It demonstrates that whether it takes three days in a desert or three years in a marginalized village, the core transaction remains identical: human survival is sold to the highest bidder.
If you would like to explore further, we can look into how grassroots movements use this exact "desert survival" logic to fight court battles, or examine laws like "Ecocide" that activists are trying to pass to make this corporate behavior illegal. Which would you prefer?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
In India's caste system, dysentery is a major problem.
I don't follow the logic here: you're saying that India's caste system is a cause for dysentery? Dysentery is a problem in lots of places in the world that don't historically have caste systems. Gemini's response of "the fact that poor Dalit families cannot afford these alternatives..." is insufficient, because it applies to poor people the world over. Please do tell me about the Dalits in Africa.
Recall that dysentery was even a problem here in the US once upon a time [google.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Stupidity (Score:2)
to even allow evaporative cooling when there is a shortage of water. (I assume that is why they need all that water)