Article

The Water Fight Over Data Centers Is a Distraction. The Grid Fight Is the Real Story.

Data centers have become a cipher, the visible stand-in for a more diffuse set of anxieties surrounding the advent of AI, including job displacement, distrust of Big Tech, and a sense of losing control of a fast-moving technology. Perhaps some of these concerns are valid. But that’s a different debate than the one about water consumption and electricity rates, which the Richland Parish project suggests we may solve.

By Daniel Lyons |  July 30, 2026