“Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” Well (no pun intended), you can drink it, but water in the Des Moines area is as priceless as – well, water.
Central Iowa has a water problem, but it’s not Central Iowa’s fault. The primary water source for the Des Moines metropolitan area includes two rivers, the Des Moines River, and the Raccoon River. At the moment, both are heavily-laden with nitrates. As a result, the Central Iowa Water Works (formerly Des Moines Water Works), has placed a ban on lawn watering. But it goes a bit further than lawns. It affects the personal idiosyncrasies of every residential customer in the CIWW jurisdiction.
According to the CIWW, “lawn watering uses upward of 40 million gallons a day in the system.” Residents are asked to cooperate by “watering your flowers with a watering can, taking shorter showers, and washing full loads of laundry.” No mention of baths. “Generally, taking a shower uses less water than a full bath. A full bathtub can require about 36 to 70 gallons of water, while a typical shower uses around 10 to 25 gallons, depending on the duration and flow rate of the showerhead.” My understanding of a shorter shower would be to get out of the shower while still soapy. Or, alternatively, don’t use soap. And I suppose watering the garden with a watering can is included under the “flowers” category.
“Des Moines Water Works produces and delivers an average 54 million gallons of high-quality drinking water each day to 600,000 central Iowans through Central Iowa Water Works.” If lawn watering usage amounts for 40 million gallons a day, that computes to 14 million gallons of water remaining for other usage, such as data centers, etc.
“Records show that data centers use 2-6% of the system capacity.” That number jumped out at me. Two percent of the system capacity is a little over 1 million gallons; six percent of the system capacity is approximately 3.24 million gallons. There is quite a difference between 3.24 million and one million. We have to assume that the smaller amount is during the winter months when cooling data banks is easier because of the outside weather, whereas hot summer months would require more cooling capacity. “Collectively, data centers rank in the top 10 of “water-consuming industrial or commercial industries” in the U.S., according to a study led by Landon Marston, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech.” https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/issues/magazine-issue/article/2024/03/engineers-often-need-a-lot-of-water-to-keep-data-centers-cool
The numbers presented by CIWW on its website looked suspicious. Looking at simple math, if the CIWW produces 54 million gallons of water daily, and a data center uses an average of just over 2 million gallons, and 40 million gallons of water are not used because of a ban on lawn watering, Central Iowa residents are left with about 10 million gallons of water.
If 54 million gallons of water are produced daily (and the statement by CIWW makes no differential distinction of any seasonal adjustments), 3.24 million gallons are used by data centers and 10 million gallons are used by residents and businesses of the metro Des Moines area. The result shows that data centers are using one-third of the water produced by CIWW. It’s a classic example of “what would you like the math to prove.”
The 2-6% estimates appear to have come from the data centers, and not the CIWW. Even if I’m wrong, what happened to the 40 million gallons of water that are not making green grass? “The exact amount of water consumed by individual data centers is difficult to determine because there is very little data publicly available for research and analysis. Moreover, that water demand can be controversial, especially because of the negative impact that data centers can have on the communities in which they are built.”
The CIWW is not to blame because nitrate concentration is high in both watersheds of the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers. The fault lies with the animal feedlots, runoff from the farm fields in the watersheds, and excessive fertilization of golf courses and lawns north of the Des Moines area. This is a problem the Iowa Legislature and the Iowa Courts refuse to address.
We are expecting rain over the next few days. On Monday, June 23, CIWW posted the following: “The lawn watering ban is still in effect, but there is rain in the forecast for this coming week! We will continue to monitor the nitrate concentrations in Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers.” I’m confused. Wouldn’t additional rainfall in the watershed bring more nitrates to our troubled waters? But what do I know?
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