I must be missing something because water seems like the least of our worries when compared to the energy being used and the carbon dioxide being produced. I know I know, still talking about CO2 at parties instead of the hot new water thing? BOOOO-RINGGGG!!!
The whole issue of "using" water is meaningless to me in the context of the water cycle. Does a data center "use" water? Whatever water evaporates from their cooling systems falls again as rain and becomes someone else's water. Same with farming - it all either evaporates (sometimes frustratingly right from the field it was applied to, or otherwise from the surface of the river it eventually runs into, or from the food you bite into, or from your sweat, or from your excretions/the sewage system/rivers again), or ends up supplementing a (typically badly depleted) aquifer, or gets temporarily used by animals including humans to e.g. hydrolyze fats (but full completion of metabolism of said fats & fatty acids actually returns MORE water on a net basis than it took to metabolize them) and so on.
In short, water is never passing into anything or anyone. It's passing through it. You don't own it, you're just borrowing it.
Even water recirculated as a coolant in a data center (the closest thing to actually "using" water) is a finite quantity, needed only one time, with maybe small top-ups due to losses, all of which end up, you guessed it, evaporating into the commons.
Water use can have big, localized problems, but that's mostly solvable by just putting the datacenters somewhere else.
Some places rely on deep aquifers that don't refill on human lifetimes, essentially fossil water. But that's mostly a local problem and we should just stop building water-hungry industry and agriculture in those places because it's stupid.
The whole issue of "using" water is meaningless to me in the context of the water cycle. Does a data center "use" water? Whatever water evaporates from their cooling systems falls again as rain and becomes someone else's water. Same with farming - it all either evaporates (sometimes frustratingly right from the field it was applied to, or otherwise from the surface of the river it eventually runs into, or from the food you bite into, or from your sweat, or from your excretions/the sewage system/rivers again), or ends up supplementing a (typically badly depleted) aquifer, or gets temporarily used by animals including humans to e.g. hydrolyze fats (but full completion of metabolism of said fats & fatty acids actually returns MORE water on a net basis than it took to metabolize them) and so on.
In short, water is never passing into anything or anyone. It's passing through it. You don't own it, you're just borrowing it.
Even water recirculated as a coolant in a data center (the closest thing to actually "using" water) is a finite quantity, needed only one time, with maybe small top-ups due to losses, all of which end up, you guessed it, evaporating into the commons.