I have worked in environmental consulting for the past decade and have routinely dealt with Ohio EPA on both hazardous waste investigation/remediation and NPDES permitted discharges. I have been part of teams preparing and submitting antidegradation and NPDES permit renewals, as well as maintaining compliance with existing permits. After reading through the news article and then the actual draft permit, the news article is very sensationalized. I am in no way defending the data centers or operators. The news article correctly states the discharges are untreated but fails to mention the strict monitoring requirements that would in place to maintain antidegradation and conform with Ohio Water Quality Standards and public water supply standards. There is also a Notice of Intent that requires the applicant to meet a list of requirements to even be considered for discharging under the general permit. NPDES permitting is a federal program that is also administered by the states. Ohio EPA is setting some pretty stringent limits under their authority in their draft permit, and the public and news organizations are cherry picking and/or don’t have the background to understand the permit requirements.
I don’t know what sort of wastewater people were imagining. It’s a datacenter, it’s not like it’s some crazy industrial process with chemical waste. They’re not grinding servers up in a blender and dumping it down the drain.
Conservatives. Ruin. Everything.
THEY FUCKING BETTER NOT! All those rivers are Source rivers. They ALL run off into the Mississippi, or The Great Lakes, and St. Lawrence.
Ohio is practically the heart of the midwestern, eastern, and Great lakes river watershed
The cryptids and end-of-world scenarios there must be out of control, so they must be going with the nuclear option:
https://media.thebrainbin.org/74/62/7462bbd431d41e3d0ebbcea86713ccfec7d12bc6c4e9f9ce3c4d316a8be5130f.pngJokes aside, it’s a draft, so I wonder if they’re proposing the absolute worse option so bad options sound acceptable. Wouldn’t be the first time I see this sort of thing, specially with alarmist, sensationalistic and discreetly ill-intented news media aplenty as samples.
“Environment Poisoning Agency”
Why can’t these data centers just recirculate most of this water? Obviously there is some loss which requires more water over time but why do they require constant fresh water?
Ohio missing the “good old days” when their rivers were flamable.
Ay, oh, way to go Ohio
