Data centers across the United States have been criticized for harming local environments sourcing power – sometimes illegally – from gas burning turbines that can release harmful pollutants into the air surrounding local communities.
But dozens of data centers have been accused of releasing harmful chemicals, heavy metals, and rare bacteria with the wastewater they release into nearby treatment facilities and waterways.
Violations have been logged for data centers in Wyoming, Virginia, New York, and Georgia, but the problem likely extends far across the rest of the US. Information on water usage and discharge for many data centers is hard to come by – or is being actively blocked.
Pollutants released into water across the US
In Wyoming, Meta was recently forced to halt water discharges from the construction site of its enormous 960-acre Cheyenne campus after a resistant bacterium – Cupriavidus gilardii – was found within a local water treatment facility.
The bacterium was identified after regulators tested a sample of the 801,000 gallons Meta had discharged into Cheyenne’s sewers. Following concerns that local residents could inhale droplets of the contaminated water if it was used for irrigation, local officials decided to stop accepting wastewater from the construction site.
Two water treatment facilities were forced offline as part of a multi-month decontamination and cleanup operation. Meta’s contractor responsible for the site, Goat Systems, is appealing the decision of officials to stop accepting wastewater from the site.
Multiple data centers across Virginia are facing enforcement actions from local authorities for violating wastewater and wetland regulations. In one such case, a data center under construction in West Virginia has funneled stormwater runoff into a local residential area, causing flooding on two occasions.
A data center near Lake Seneca, New York, is facing criticism from the Seneca Lake Guardian organization. The site was previously a cryptocurrency mining data center, but has been transitioning towards handling AI workloads instead. Seneca Lake Guardian has said that wastewater from the site flows directly into Lake Seneca at temperatures of up to 108F (42C), which can harm fish living in the lake and cause blooms of toxic algae.
The company behind the data center, Vulcan Infrastructure and Power, says it complies with all relevant environmental laws.
Multiple new data centers in Georgia have been approved to draw water from the Chattahoochee river, but local environmental guardians, such as water policy director at Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Chris Manganiello, are being blindsided by a complete lack of information on how much water will be taken from the river, and what will be put back in.
“We need to know what is in this wastewater but there is a void of information,” Mangeniello told The Guardian. “I would like there to not be more Pfas [forever chemicals] going into the river but there is this level of anxiety because we don’t know what’s there.”
Don’t throw the Pfas out with the cooling water
Data centers pump water through miles of pipes crisscrossing their hardware in order to draw away excess heat. While there have been moves towards “closed-loop” cooling technology – where the water used is recycled within the system – there are still valid environmental concerns associated with these systems.
Before using a closed-loop system, the pipes need to be flushed through with water to wash away any debris or contaminants that were deposited within the pipes during assembly. This water is then released back into sewers to be cleaned by local treatment plants.
But many water treatment plants simply aren’t built to handle filtering water that contains industrial contaminants. These contaminants can include heavy metals or Pfas that can cause health problems in humans and animals.
Data centers are also being built in drought-hit regions, largely because the land is cheap, placing additional strain on already struggling water tables. Data centers can use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day to stay operational, and while closed-loop systems ensure this water is only taken out of the cycle once, it is still a significant sum of water to remove from regions experiencing droughts.
