Most of these new hyperscaler centers have been doing evaporative because it's cheaper to install and easier to run so as you said it is effectively gone.

They're also being placed in numerous dry areas, such as Phoenix, Arizona, where the water crisis is so bad that even if 90% of the water makes it back immediately into the local water supply, that added draw is large enough to tip things too far.

Datacenters don't draw water from rivers. They take it from our drinking water supply through the supply network, and then dump it.

That water is as consumed as water flushed down the toilet. It's gone from the community, even if obviously it still exists somewhere.

The water isn’t destroyed in the process, it’s just heated.

I keep telling this to my local water utility but they keep billing me for drawing water from the municipal supply, regardless.

if it’s open loop cooling, sending the heated water back into the body of water it was drawn from

Dumping superheated water into the reservoir won't have any second order consequences, right?

The heated water is released back into the waterways and by extensions kills everything living there. This collapses the ecosystem and changes the water chemistry. This can result in contamination, invasive species taking over, etc... Do that on major water ways like the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence and you fuck with people's drink water supply.

Only closed loop data centers are remotely feasible.