The water panic is often aimed at the wrong part of the project. A closed-loop data centre cooling system is not a cooling tower.
Meta says the Sturgeon County data centre will use a water-efficient closed-loop liquid-cooling system with dry cooling and no operational water use in the cooling system. That matters.
A proper closed loop is filled, treated, circulated, cooled, and reused. It is not constantly evaporating water. Normal water use should be limited to initial fill, commissioning, treatment, rare losses, leaks, repairs, or service events.
That does not mean there is no water issue anywhere on the project. It means the water issue has to be assigned to the right component.
Heat is captured close to the chips.
Coolant carries heat through a sealed system.
Heat is rejected to air through radiator-style equipment.
The loop returns to the servers and continues.
Fire suppression is not a daily water-consumption issue for the data hall. Systems exist for emergency protection and code compliance, not routine cooling.
The design details matter, but standby emergency capacity is not the same as daily water use.
Thermal power generation can use real water for makeup, steam-cycle losses, treatment, blowdown, and maintenance depending on design.
That belongs in the power-generation discussion, not in claims that server cooling is a water hog.
Illustrative hierarchy, not a permit calculation. The key distinction is that the data centre cooling item is a closed-loop system, not an evaporative cooling tower.
The public should ask for the actual water balance: source water, makeup water, process water, wastewater, disposal, fire protection capacity, and public reporting.
That is a serious question. But it should not be blurred into a claim that the data centre cooling loop is continuously using water like a cooling tower.
Stock/illustrative images are placeholders for design and can be swapped with licensed local images before launch.
The data centre cooling system is probably the weakest water objection. The power plant and the full project water balance are the real questions.