“He told me, 'Listen, we don't even see a blip on the radar with these hyperscalers.' They called them data centers at the time. He goes, 'I'll tell you where I do see it, and I could use your help: if people would stop watering their lawns five days a week in the summer, that would be really helpful.'”
sputnikintelligence.com
Inman describes consulting a local water utility CEO about data centers before accepting her nonprofit's first donation from a hyperscaler, some six or seven years ago, and retells what he said. It is a concrete counterpoint to the idea that data centers are the main strain on municipal water.
ever seen his bees or had any of his money? No,
but I went there expecting like a high-minded guy when we did the interview and his truck like barely ran. He's like, yeah, I don't know. I just haven't bothered to get another one. He's just one of the
greatest people. Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love Ted and I hope he's enjoying retirement because he should be. And, you know, I hope he doesn't mind me telling the story, but he told me, listen, and this is, I mean, this is some years ago. This is six, seven years ago. He's like, listen, we don't even see a blip on the radar with these hyperscalers. Like they called them data centers at the time. He goes, I'll tell you where I do see it and I could use your help. And I was like, where's that? I'm thinking, oh my gosh, like, what is this? And he goes, if people would stop watering their lawns five days a week in the summer, that would be really helpful. And that was then so when two years ago, I'm like, Ted warned me about this. Right. And so I think that there's some a few things happening right now. I think that there are for sure bad actors. You just have to, you know, search a few cases and you will see in other areas there's Bad actors, right? So we have to vet our partners. How do
you do that? Like you're, let's say it's just a nameless, faceless $10 billion organization to say, hey, we're doing a hyperscale. We want to offset it. We want to help. We want to give a donation to you guys to be able to handle those funds. How do you even begin? I mean, they could literally hire…
we have to depend on our partners at the state, at the federal, and at the local levels. I mean, if Iowa really wanted to get serious about this, because there are real benefits. I mean, our cities and our counties are really hurting right now for revenue, right? And tax base. And there's some real…
you work with maybe you're not even allowed to say Schilling, Keith Schilling?