In March 2023, four months later, Pena won the case in a surprising victory. The environmental ministry revealed that Google’s data center planned to use two million gallons of water a day directly from the drinking water supply, equivalent to the daily water consumption of fifty-five thousand people. With much of Montevideo receiving salt water in their taps not long after, the revelations were explosive. Thousands of Uruguayans took to the streets to protest Google and all of the other industries that had led the government to squander the country’s precious freshwater resources. The slogans
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