US data center unknowingly infecting town water with rare and deadly bacteria
A data centre in Wyoming has been identified as unknowingly infecting a town's water with rare and deadly bacteria.
Public anger at AI data centres has been building for some time. From concerns about the vast amounts of water and energy they consume to Polaroid going viral for its blunt warning that the industry is draining resources, the backlash is growing.
Now, a case in Wyoming has added a new layer of tension.
Cheyenne’s Board of Public Utilities (BOPU) has suspended all industrial wastewater from data centre systems until further notice, after a contractor linked to Meta Platforms contaminated the city's wastewater system with a rare and potentially deadly bacterium.
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The announcement last Thursday (2 July) named Meta as the source of the contamination and came more than four months after the incident first disrupted the city's reclaimed wastewater network.
The social media giant is building an $800 million data centre in south Cheyenne. But its contractor, Goat Systems LLC, has been found to be in 'significant noncompliance' with the city's industrial waste regulations.
Speaking to the Cowboy State Daily, Cheyenne City Councilman Pete Laybourn called it a 'very, very unpleasant surprise.'
He explained: "It definitely complicates matters. It's about the last thing we need right now. But it's a reality we're going to have to work through.”
A months-long investigation traced the contamination to a process known as fill-and-flush discharge, in which data centres flood their cooling systems with water before powering up for the first time.
The discharge introduced a bacterium called Cupriavidus gilardii into the local wastewater pipes. Cupriavidus is a little-known, multidrug-resistant pathogen rarely found in wastewater. While human infection is extremely rare, it is far from harmless. The bacterium has been linked to ten deaths, including three cases involving immunocompromised children, and carries a mortality rate of 31.3% based on a review of 32 known infections recorded since 2009.
In response, local officials have now revoked waste-dumping privileges for every data centre campus connected to municipal water services.
Frank Strong, the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities engineering and water resources division manager, told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle that the bacterium was first detected during routine testing for faecal contamination.
"This isn't something we normally test for," he noted. "We actually had to go through quite a process to figure out what it was."
Strong confirmed that as soon as the source was identified, the discharge was shut down immediately, though the exact origin of the pathogen within the facility itself remains under investigation.
Meanwhile, Meta told reporters it's working with its construction contractor Fortis to 'resolve this issue.'
A spokesperson for Meta told Cowboy State: "When the board shared that it found a substance in the city's wastewater - not public drinking water - Fortis immediately stopped discharging industrial wastewater and began hauling it offsite."
As of the time of writing, no members of the public have contracted the bacterium as a result of the contamination.