To me, the very idea that someone could steal water in such amounts is mindboogling.

Here, we have metering for each connection, and, on top of this, metering at key nodes all over the grid. Not to catch someone watering their lawn unmetered, but to watch for leaks. Water is considered important, so the utilities have strict monitoring requirements. If the measurements don't add up in a segment, the utilities immediately start to investigate, as any leak that lets water out could also let dirt in - an absolute no-go here.

They would have caught the culprits after the first few cubic meters.

Burn. It. Down.

To put this in perspective, an Olympic sized swimming pool is 804,836 gallons (assuming 8ft depth). 29 million gallons is 36 Olympic sized swimming pools.

When the warehouse catches fire, there won't be enough water to put it out

This is what happens on construction projects where the municipality isn't properly enforcing or securing the construction site's access to water, and it happens a lot. Municipalities should be held accountable by their constituency for the failure to secure access and bill construction companies regardless of what kind of construction is being done. They meter the water of regular users, industrial use should also be metered and paid for.

Don't at me with BS about how AI companies shouldn't be building data centers. I know. I agree. That is a separate issue from the failure of the municipality here.

a data center campus 20 miles south of Atlanta had been drawing roughly 29 million gallons through two water connections the county didn't know existed, Politico reported Saturday.

Tigert told Politico that her department has a single employee handling both inspections and plan reviews, saying, “... we don’t have enough staff. We can’t keep staff.”