‘I can’t drink water’

When Beverly Morris retired in 2016, he thought he had found his dream house and a peaceful stretch of trees and a quiet village.

Today, something else.

Only 400 meters (366 m) from the front balcony in Fayette County, a large, window-free building is seated in a server, cables and flashing lights.

This is the center of the information – many of the small towns are in the world, all over the world to strengthen everything from online banking to artificial intelligence tools all over the world.

“I can’t live half of my house in my house and half of the water,” Ms Morris said. “I can’t drink water.”

Meta (Facebook’s mother company) belongs to the construction of the center, violates its private well, causing excessive production of extreme sediments. Ms Morris packs the waters in buckets to whip the toilet.

Plumbing should have saved in the kitchen to restore water pressure, he said. However, the water from the tap still has the residue.

“I’m afraid of drinking water but still cook with him and brush my teeth with him,” Morris says. “I’m worried about this? Yes.”

Meta said the two were not connected.

In a statement to the BBC, Meta said, “Being a good neighbor is a priority,” he said.

The company instructed Morris to investigate an independent groundwater to investigate the concern. According to the report, its information center operation “does not negatively affect the underground water in the area.”

META disputes, despite the fact that Morris’s water will cause problems, it evaluated its assessment as a neighbor as a neighbor.

“It was my perfect place,” he says. “But it’s not over.”

We tend to think like something invisible to the cloud – floating above in digital air. But the reality is very physical.

The cloud lives in more than 10,000 data centers in the world, most of them in the United States, England and Germany.

Now this number is growing rapidly with AI, which is an increase in online activities. Bettle more complaints of nearby residents.

The US BUMU occurs in the projects of local activity – $ 64 billion in projects (£ 47 billion) Nationwide or Nationwide Blocked, According to the pressure group data center explanation.

And concerns are not just about construction. As well as water use. It requires a lot of water to keep servers cool.

“These are very hot processors”, Mark Mills of the National Center for National Energy Analytics before Congress in April. “The surface of each chip is hotter than the surface of the sun. It takes a lot of water to cool them.”

Many centers use the water hot and evaporating evaporating cooling systems – how the warmth of our body is heating away. In hot days, an object can use millions of gallons.

A business estimates that the AI ​​managed data centers can consume 1.7 trillion gallon globally on the scale by 2027.

Several places clearly show this tension more clearly – one of the fastest growing data central markets in the United States.

His humid climate, a natural and more efficient water source for data centers, making it attractive to developers. But this abundance can be a cost.

Gordon Rogers is the executive director of the executive director of the non-profit advocacy group, which follows the health of the Georgian Flint River. The US company provides a valley from a new construction site for a data center built by quality technology services (QTS).

George diets, a local volunteer, turns an instance of water into a clear plastic bag. Cloudy and brown.

“It should not be color,” he says. Therefore, it offers the sediment flow and perhaps floxula. These are chemicals used in construction to close the building and prevent erosion, but they can create a sludge if they enter the water system.

QTS meets high environmental standards of data centers and says millions of local taxes.

Often construction is carried out by third-party contractors, and local residents are the rest of them to deal with the results.

“They should not do it,” says Mr. Rogers say. “A larger rich property owner has no more ownership rights than a smaller, less rich property owner.”

Technical giants say they are aware of the issues and take action.

“This is the goal, we will be invested in more water, and communities to the 2030s,” those who say, “the amazon web services in the global-scale is more in the data center (AWS).

He says that AWS invests in projects such as leakage repair, rainwater collection and use of wastewater treated for cooling. The company in Virginia is working with farmers to reduce food pollution in the largest Esto in the United States, Chesapeake Bay.

South Africa and India – AWS does not use water for cooling – the company still invests in water input and quality initiatives.

Mr Hewes in America says, water is used in about 10% of the hot days only every year.

Still add numbers. An AI Sorgu – For example, a request to ChatGpt – can use a lot of water as a small glass you get from the corner store. It becomes clear and scale with billions of polls per day.

Prof Rajiv Garg teaches to calculate the cloud at the University of Emoria in Atlanta. This information centers say that it does not go – if there is anything, they become the spine of modern life.

“No returns,” said Prof Garg.

But there is a way forward. Key, it argues, long-term thinking, smart cooling systems, rainwater collection and more efficient infrastructure.

In a short time, the data centers will create a “great tension”, acknowledged. However, the industry is starting to sustain.

Again, this was a little consolation for homeowners like Beverly Morris – yesterday’s dream and tomorrow infrastructure.

Data centers have been more than just one industrial trend – is now part of national policy. President Donald Trump has recently called the largest AI infrastructure project in history “a future equipped with American data.”

In Georgia, the sun beats down the thick humidity – to remind the state that the information center is so attractive for developers.

The future of technology for the locals is already here. And it is difficult to live with high, thirsty and sometimes.

As the AI ​​grows, the problem is clear: how to strengthen the most important source of all the most important sources of tomorrow’s digital world.