What's the deal with AI datacenters using water for cooling?

Is there any reason the water can't be safely consumed later? It's not toxic or nuclear is it? The cooling water didn't just up and disappear did it?

Edit: Links provided in the comments...

• https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc&t=1264
• https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/03/06/how-much-water-do-the-data-centres-use-its-a-secret/
• https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025EcInd.17012986J/abstract
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_cooling_towers
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederaussem_Power_Station

Notable comments:

• https://lemmy.world/comment/23672269
• https://sh.itjust.works/comment/25288634
• https://lemmy.cafe/comment/16350045
• https://sh.itjust.works/comment/25294655

Edit addendum: I'd like to thank everyone that's participated in this question thread, sorry if I missed any good relevant links in the comments.

To be clear, I still loathe the whole AI datacenter era, it really is heavily wasteful of resources, notably energy, but I wanted to better understand the water usage situation.