Because statistics like those often ignore the fact the water they're calculating is inaccessible for other uses. They calculate the rainwater used to make the grass grow, water we don't collect nor have available for other uses, but it makes the number higher and shocking. If you see "14,000 gallons of water per cow" you think that's how much water we've "lost" when in reality, it's a massive bucket of rainwater they're drinking out of, not a hit to our irrigation or water treatment facilities.

It's a misleading statistic meant to shock and manipulate you into a specific way of thinking, a lot like your original comment. I don't give a shit how much rainwater a cow drinks, I care about how much is being pulled from local irrigation. Rainwater is going to lay in the dirt and evaporate anyway so why is that being calculated? If the answer to how much water is being pulled from our infrastructure is nearly zero, that's how many fucks I dedicate to it.

Should datacenters be operating in silicon valley where water is already scarce? No. But people shouldn't also be living in a fucking desert, overdrawing from the river that lets anyone live there, so maybe they should move. Not like they can't afford to.