00:00Meta's Wyoming data center is under fire for contaminating a city's water system with a rare bacterium.
00:06Last month, the Board of Public Utilities in Cheyenne, Wyoming, issued a public notice that it had found
00:11Cupriyvidus gilardii in the city's wastewater treatment facility.
00:15It was discovered during routine testing in February and did not enter Cheyenne's drinking water supply.
00:21While infections from this bacterium are incredibly rare, it does pose a threat to elders and
00:28immunocompromised people who are directly exposed to it.
00:31The Board of Public Utilities identified this month that the bacterium came from Goat System LLC,
00:37a Meta contractor responsible for the tech company's 715,000-square-foot data center campus
00:42that's currently in progress.
00:44The city temporarily suspended its reclaimed water irrigation system, which resumed service
00:49at the end of June.
00:50And officials terminated Meta's privileges to dump construction wastewater into the city's water system.
00:56The city also updated a policy that prohibits companies with data centers using closed-loop
01:02cooling systems from dumping wastewater.
01:04A Meta spokesperson told me that the tech company is committed to being a good neighbor
01:09to the city and is working to allocate resources to support its energy grid and water cleanup efforts.
01:15The pollutants from Meta's $800 million data center buildout is one of several reasons why
01:21Americans are growing increasingly skeptical of the AI infrastructure boom.
01:25And a recent Gallup poll found that 70% of Americans oppose data center construction in their local areas.
01:32For more on the data center backlash, you can check out my article on Fortune.com.
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