A data center in Georgia reportedly used nearly 30 million gallons of water without proper billing.
The issue came to light after homeowners in a nearby subdivision reported unusually low water pressure.
A subsequent investigation by Fayette County found that a data center campus about 20 miles south of Atlanta had been drawing roughly 29 million gallons of water through two connections the county was unaware of, according to a report by Politico.
Quality Technology Services (QTS), the Blackstone-owned developer behind the 615-acre Fayetteville campus, was billed $147,474 in retroactive charges for the unmetered water use. Officials later said the amount likely covered about four months of usage. QTS said the timeframe was between nine and 15 months.
Vanessa Tigert, director of the Fayette County Water System, attributed the issue to an administrative error during a system transition.
“Fayette County is a suburb, it’s mostly residential, and we don’t have much commercial meters in our system anyway,” she said. “And so we didn’t realize our connection point wasn’t working.”
A QTS spokesperson said the company paid the charges once notified and explained that the unmetered usage occurred during the county’s shift to smart meters.
Despite the billing issue, Fayette County did not issue fines. Officials said they are maintaining a cooperative relationship with the developer.
The campus, which spans 615 acres and is part of a larger development plan of up to 16 buildings, is among the largest data center projects in the country. It currently includes 13 buildings totaling about 6.2 million square feet.
The controversy comes as communities across the U.S. grow more critical of data center development. Pushback on new projects has been increasing recently due to concerns over their demands on local water and power systems.
In April, an Indianapolis City-County Council member’s home was shot at after he supported a local data center project.
The attack on Ron Gibson followed a 6–2 vote by the Metropolitan Development Commission on April 1 approving rezoning for Metrobloks, a Los Angeles-based developer, to build a nearly 14-acre data center in Martindale-Brightwood.
Nowhere in this article does it state that the data center was the cause of the pressure issue. Did they have low pressure for 15 month?
Other sites have carried this story as well as video concerning the data center/water problem. The video shows the low pressure and an associated problem of the water being tainted with a brown substance emanating from the (in the video) a kitchen sink faucet.
But they didn’t forget to bill the regular customers thought.