US datacenters draw wastewater enforcement across multiple states

Trump calls datacenters ‘golden goose’ despite bipartisan scrutiny

The Wyoming case came to light when officials conducting routine tests on water discharged from a Meta artificial-intelligence datacenter under construction in Cheyenne found it contained Cupriavidus gilardii, a rare and potentially hazardous bacterium. The 801,000 gallons of contaminated wastewater had been ejected into city sewers by Goat Systems, a contractor for Meta’s $800 million, 960-acre AI campus, during a “fill and flush” pipe-cleaning operation. While the wastewater was not bound for the public drinking supply, city water-resources manager Frank Strong said the discovery prompted the board of public utilities to halt intake from Goat Systems in July — a decision the contractor is now appealing.

“It was a big surprise,” Strong said. “Out of a sense of caution we’ve shut it down until we can find out more information.”

Meta, in a statement attributed to a company spokesman, said independent testing by Goat Systems found no evidence of the bacterium and questioned the validity of the city’s tests. “Meta is committed to being a good neighbor in Cheyenne, which includes helping protect local water resources,” the spokesman said. “We appreciate the board of public utilities’ detailed release of information, which confirms the board found no impact to the public or environment.”

The Wyoming incident is among several wastewater cases drawing enforcement attention or planned litigation across the country. In Georgia, Flint Riverkeeper said it intends to sue the QTS datacenter in Fayetteville, alleging the facility has discharged “massive amounts of dirt [and] massive concentrations of metals” into the Flint River over the past two years. In Virginia, authorities have brought enforcement actions against several datacenters for wastewater and wetland permit violations. In West Virginia, stormwater runoff from an incomplete datacenter has twice flooded surrounding houses.

In New York, opposition has focused on a gas-fired facility originally built for crypto mining that is being repurposed for AI by Vulcan Infrastructure and Power. Critics said the operation would draw water from Seneca Lake and discharge it back into the lake at temperatures as high as 108°F (42°C), into a trout stream where trout are stressed at temperatures of 70°F or higher.

“It’s going into a trout stream, where trout are stressed at temperatures of 70F (21C) or higher, and that hot water is also a contributing factor to harmful algal blooms, which is a toxin to both humans and animals,” said Yvonne Taylor, vice-president of Seneca Lake Guardian and president of the National Coalition Against Cryptomining.

New York has issued a temporary moratorium on hyperscale datacenters, and Taylor claimed there was swelling support across the U.S. for a national pause on such facilities.

“These facilities are spreading across the country like a cancer,” she said. “AI datacenters are very, very good at greenwashing and trying to paint a picture that sounds like everything is going to be nothing but unicorns and rainbows, when in fact what we’re finding out is just the opposite.”

The Waterkeeper Alliance, a network of environmental organizations, said 55 of its affiliated groups across the U.S. were working on datacenter-related issues, with 80 percent of these campaigns centered on concerns that pollutants may be leaching into the environment via discharged water. A Waterkeeper Alliance spokeswoman said datacenters have been documented as sources of a wide range of toxic pollutants, including Pfas, heavy metals and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The scope of the concern extends to public-records access. In Wisconsin, an environmental group has sued the city of Racine to compel more detail on the water use of a $3.3 billion Microsoft datacenter. In Oregon, the city of The Dalles in 2021 sued its local newspaper, the Oregonian, to block the release of water data related to a Google datacenter before eventually dropping the case.

“We need to know what is in this wastewater but there is a void of information,” said Chris Manganiello, water policy director at Chattahoochee Riverkeeper in Georgia, where several new datacenters are planned to draw water from the Chattahoochee. “I would like there to not be more Pfas going into the river but there is this level of anxiety because we don’t know what’s there.”

Datacenters consume large volumes of water both for cooling power-hungry servers and for construction-related flushing operations. A mid-sized datacenter can consume about 300,000 gallons of water a day. The industry argues its water use is a fraction of sectors such as agriculture.

The wastewater backlash has begun to draw bipartisan political attention. Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman, a Republican and ally of President Trump, wrote to Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to demand answers about the bacterial contamination in Cheyenne. “Water is a precious resource in our state, so it is of immense concern to learn the system marketed to reduce a datacenter’s water consumption caused this contamination,” Hageman said.

Trump himself has rejected the public criticism. Posting on Truth Social last week, the president said: “The only reason that communities throughout the USA. should not want datacenters is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

His administration has also sought to make it harder for the public to learn about and comment on datacenter operations, including their water use. Trump has separately called AI datacenters a “golden goose” that creates jobs and wealth.