For months, the city of Memphis, xAI, and partners have been planning a wastewater plant to provide water for cooling the company’s first supercomputer in Memphis. Last week, ground was broken on the site, as reported by Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian:

The plant will take wastewater treated at the City of Memphis’ nearby TE Maxson’s Wastewater Treatment Plant and push it through technology known as ceramic membranes. Those membranes — thousands of them — will filter contaminants out of the water and make it usable as an industrial coolant. It will then cool the data center and the TVA Allen Combined Cycle Plant.

Brent Mayo, xAI’s senior manager for site build and infrastructure, said that the membranes, stacked on top of each other, would be taller than four Empire State Buildings.

A nearby steel manufacturer was going to use the plant to recycle water used at their plant, but now no longer will. This means that Nucor Steel will still dump its used water into the Mississippi River, but could mean xAI could use the plant for its second datacenter as well:

Mayo said the facility could also potentially serve Colossus 2, the much larger data center the company is building about 8.5 miles away in Whitehaven, along the Mississippi border.

How the purified wastewater would get to Colossus 2 remains unclear. One way could be by truck. Another could be for xAI to purchase easements for a water pipeline through much of Southwest Memphis, which could be a difficult undertaking.

On its website, xAI says:

We are investing well north of $80 million to build a state-of-the-art water recycling plant in the next two years, protecting approximately 4.745 billion gallons of the Memphis Aquifer each year, and eliminating the need for our facility to draw from the Memphis Aquifer for industrial use.

In addition to serving our facility, the water recycling plant will serve other major industrial users in the area, which will further reduce demand on the Memphis Aquifer and protect the City’s current and future water needs.

Protect Our Aquifer, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the massive aquifers under the Memphis region, shared this statement:

This commitment by xAI sets a new standard for industry; we can and must use water
responsibly in the Mid-South. Our drinking water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer should never
be the default source for cooling water.

We expect Tennessee Valley Authority to continue being a part of this effort by signing the End
User Agreement and reducing their aquifer use by up to seven million gallons of water per day.
We are disappointed that Nucor Steel has decided not to move forward as an end-user at this
time and instead stay fully dependent on the Aquifer. We hope they reconsider.

The group does have four areas in which it would like to see progress, and it’s hard to disagree with any of them:

• Charges xAI a fair fee for wastewater access;
• Invests in workforce development for Memphians focused in the nearby communities;
• Provides public and educational access for tours and STEM learning; and
• Reduces liability for the City through strong public-private partnerships.