Green Group discussion

Golden mussels are an invasive species from Asia. Their environmental impacts are similar to the quagga and zebra mussels.

California has embarked on a campaign to control the spread of these mussels as it is no longer possible to eliminate them. The larvae are microscopic size and can survive in the smallest pools of water. They are concentrating on the boats that go from lake to lake, or river.

They can dry out the boats, flush out the boats, power wash the boats, sanitize them, or if people don't want to pay the fees, the boats can be put on land for 30 days to dry out.

They have 14 dogs who can sniff out the mussels but they have to cover an enormous area. The dogs are trained to sniff out other items as well so they are always busy.

Since the golden mussels can't be eliminated the pipe systems have to be upgraded so they can continue to work.

"Mandatory boat inspections are among the few weapons in California’s arsenal for protecting its thousands of lakes and reservoirs from the invasion. The mussels’ prolific growth and voracious appetites can upend entire ecosystems, encrust underwater surfaces, choke off water supplies and damage dams and power plants."

https://apnews.com/article/delta-air-...

https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/...

Data centers are using a lot of water. It could be too much water. Where new water might be coming from to keep them running is someone else's problem.

Because of a data center drawing 10 percent of the county's water every day, the situation has become so dire that Newton County, GA., is on track to be in a water deficit by 2030, according to a report last year. If the local water authority cannot upgrade its facilities, residents could be forced to ration water.

They are not alone. Data centers go to where they get "free" water. They pay for the water but they don't do anything to improve the situation of dwindling water supplies which is where the real cost comes in. The entire cost of using something is never factored in, as that would make most ideas unprofitable.

Data centers like the Meta’s, which was completed last year, typically guzzles around 500,000 gallons of water a day. New data centers built to train more powerful A.I. are set to be even thirstier, requiring millions of gallons of water a day, according to water permit applications reviewed by The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/te...

I understand the datacentre needing water for coolant, but the water has to go somewhere. Does a lot of it evaporate, or is it let run back to the ground or river, albeit warmer?

Up to 80 percent of the water is evaporated to get rid of the heat. The cheapest way to do it. The cost of the actual water is 50 percent less if you use recycled water instead of using fresh water from the tap. That is only the water. The machinery needed to recycle the water is expensive and needs expensive maintenance.

Plus the water has to be periodically purified of metals, minerals, and dirt that it picks up. What's left is routed to outdoors or into pipes that lead back to the water company or municipal sewers.

The Chinese are experimenting with running data centers in the ocean. It is small but industrial grade, it is composed of a total of 400 server units. Big data centers can have a few thousand or tens of thousands of servers, small centers could have a couple of hundred servers. The 400 units aren't warming up the ocean though its not known what environmental impact would happen if large data centers were built underwater.

The plan is to put 100 units for a total of 40,000 servers underwater. This is inline with with China’s strategy to enhance its AI capabilities, with 219 intelligent computing centers launched across 81 cities from 2022 to 2024, according to IDC.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/china-s...

Most power plants are beside rivers or lakes or seas, so we have been warming up the water for some time.

‘Fastest and most complex' mussel treatment in North America

They treated a large, fast moving river, Snake River, with chelated copper to kill off the quagga muscles, which do the same kind of damage as the golden mussels do in California.

They had to treat the river twice, instead of once, over a period of two years, and are waiting to see if it worked the second time.

There is a lot of chelated copper that settled on the bottom of the river. The long term effects are unknown. It could drastically change the life found on the bottom of the river. It is not known how long the copper will stay there. When PCBs were discovered in New York rivers, PCB's were no longer dumped in the rivers and what was there was "removed" from the bottom of the rivers by letting clean sediment cover up the river bottom. The PCBs are still there, just covered up.

Some of the species were only lightly impacted, other species were almost wiped out. It remains to be seen if the quagga muscles are only almost wiped out and will return again, as it is hoped the other severely impacted species return back to previous population sizes.

Baldwin's study found that the effects of the copper on invertebrates, like native mussels and snails, were devastating. The number of invertebrates in the treatment area dropped by 50-90% after the chemicals were deployed, though some species were more tolerant of the copper than others.

"One thing that we don't know is how long those effects might last, the decreases in abundance," Baldwin said. "We don't know if those numbers would rebound within a few months, or if it would take potentially years."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ida...

That's quite an experiment.

Anti-fouling paint (to stop limpets attaching to hulls) was made illegal on boats of any kind here, as the paint flakes sank to the mud and killed invertebrates. Like in your story, the old flakes stayed in the sediment of harbours.