Pipes Dreams
Meta’s AI Data Center Caught Infecting Town Water Supply With Deadly Bacteria
“This isn’t something we normally test for.”
https://futurism.com/health-medicine/meta-ai-data-center-pathogen-bacteria-water?fbclid=IwdGRjcAS5bGxjbGNrBLlsQmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHges5vQDaNZ0Xy97GSqpgnfgYqYWTYr9OUDVKhB_mLSlong7LvyFSUJzzR4Q_aem_qb0sFGqSOz4lEtmeQ5s-5w

With public anger at AI data centers boiling over, all it takes is one bad neighbor to get every data center in town locked out.

That’s the story unfolding in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where local officials are revoking waste-dumping privileges for every data center campus connected to municipal water services. As Cowboy State Daily reported, the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities has rolled out a sweeping ban on fill-and-flush discharge, the process in which data centers flood their cooling systems with water before powering up for the first time.

That decision came after one bad actor, the Meta-affiliated data center company Goat Systems LLC, flooded local waste water pipes with fill-and-flush swill containing a rare and deadly bacterium known as Cupriavidus gilardii.

Though it seems nobody has contracted the potentially deadly bacterium as a result of Meta’s fill-and-flush, the city’s response to the incident underscores the degree to which people across the US are scrutinizing data centers — and the undeniable im

A massive Michigan data center is humming like a jet engine into nearby homes.

In the small town of Dowagiac, Michigan, residents living near a 30-megawatt data center say a constant mechanical hum has transformed daily life.

One homeowner compared it to living beside a jet engine.

Using his own sound meter, Billy Finn measured noise levels around 60 decibels from his porch – about as loud as a noisy dishwasher. At times, he says the sound has climbed as high as 78 decibels.

He says the hum is constant.

“It’s like we’re living in a prison in our own yard, in our own house,” his wife, Marjorie, told local media.

Two nearby homeowners have filed a lawsuit against the facility, alleging that excessive noise from the data center is invading their homes and reducing their quality of life. They argue the operator failed to install adequate sound barriers.

Noise complaints are becoming a recurring issue as AI data centers expand across the United States.

These facilities contain thousands of servers that run around the clock and require powerful cooling systems. While the computers themselves are relatively quiet, the large fans, cooling equipment, and backup infrastructure can generate a continuous low-frequency hum.

Health experts say noise at these levels is unlikely to damage hearing directly. However, long-term exposure to persistent environmental noise has been linked in some studies to increased stress, sleep disruption, and other health effects.

The data center operator has not publicly accepted the residents’ claims, and the lawsuit is ongoing.

As AI companies race to build more data centers, communities across the country are increasingly debating not only electricity and water use, but also what it means to live next door to the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence.

Learn more:
“‘A prison in our own yard’: Life next to a data center — and its never-ending noise.” MLive.

Even if a closed-loop data center consumes zero water on-site, it still has an indirect water footprint via the electricity it consumes. Depending on the local power grid (e.g., if the electricity is generated by hydroelectric or thermoelectric power plants that require water for cooling), the data center indirectly drives water consumption upstream.