A news agency report of 8 November says taps ran dry on Batam while data centres rose near Singapore. Iggy and Angela sort each claim as an account, a measurement or a projection, using an HDB block with a rooftop tank to explain the dispute.
I look at the Batam water story without accepting the headline as the verdict. Residents say taps ran dry, the utility points to drought, a very low reservoir and an electrical fault, while officials deny that data centres caused the disruption. The report does not say how much water any data centre uses, so I separate what people experienced from what was actually measured. I also look at Johor’s jump from 10 megawatts to 2.1 gigawatts of data centre capacity, and why a projection is not the same as proof.
Key takeaways:
Residents report dry taps, protests and disrupted daily life in Batam.
The utility attributes outages to drought, low reservoir levels and an electrical fault.
Authorities ordered developers to build desalination plants for cooling.
No data centre water-use figure or share of Batam’s supply is given.
Johor’s capacity rose from 10 megawatts to 2.1 gigawatts, a 210-fold increase.
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