What changed
About 300 residents of Batam protested outside data centres in Nongsa Digital Park after some households in Bakau Serip reported three months without piped water. BP Batam blamed a prolonged dry spell and denied diverting household water to data centres; authorities had already told new facilities to build desalination plants instead of relying on reservoirs.
Why it matters
Batam’s 1.3 million residents depend on rainwater collected in six artificial reservoirs. Nongsa reservoir, which supplies Bakau Serip, could dry within a month without rain, according to simulations cited by Akar Bhumi Indonesia.
That makes the dispute bigger than one protest. Families are buying water in drums and tanker trucks while household taps remain dry. Residents say the tanker water is dirty and foul-smelling, and that money meant for rice is being spent on water instead.
The data centres’ actual water use is unclear, so the direct cause of the shortage remains unconfirmed. But the underlying pressure is straightforward: cooling servers requires water, while Batam has no natural freshwater sources and its reservoirs are already under strain.
The scale of that trade-off can be substantial. A typical data centre is estimated to consume about 300,000 gallons of water a day. A 50MW facility can use an amount comparable to 2,200 households daily. That is why demands for transparent figures matter here: without them, residents are left arguing over a crucial resource with no shared measure of who is using what.
Comments
No comments yet.