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. Per Cowboy State, Goat Systems was found to be in “significant noncompliance” with Cheyenne’s industrial waste regulations after a months-long investigation traced the bacteria to Meta’s discharge.
“This isn’t something we normally test for,” Frank Strong, Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities engineering and water resource division manager told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle of the investigation. Strong noted that the bacterium was first spotted during routine testing for fecal contamination, adding that it’s a bizarre pathogen to find in any wastewater, even that coming from a data center.
“We actually had to go through quite a process to figure out what it was,” he said.
Cupriavidus is a little-known, multidrug-resistant pathogen. Though human infection is extremely rare, it has nonetheless been linked to ten deaths, including three cases involving immunocompromised children. According to one review of Cupriavidus cases, the bacterial infection has a mortality rate of 31.3 percent, out of a sample size of 32 known infections dating back to 2009.
“As soon as we became aware of the bacteria, and then of where it was coming from, we shut them down immediately,” Strong told the Wyoming Tribune. Strong caveated that the exact source of the pathogen within the facility is still unknown, but that wastewater from Meta’s 800,000 square foot Cheyenne campus — which is still under construction — nonetheless contained it.
Cheyenne’s sanitary sewer system routes to a water reclamation plant, which supplies water for parks and other public green space. Citing concerns around what happens if Cupriavidus-laden water was released during irrigation, Strong says the city temporarily shuttered its reclamation program to conduct additional tests.
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