Erin Brockovich Is Taking On a New Issue: AI Data Centers

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Now, 5 million gallons. That’s how much water a large data center in the U.S. can use on an average day. That shocking statistic according to the nonpartisan Environmental and Energy Study Institute. This is all because of the need to cool down servers, raising concerns about the huge environmental impact of running these centers. Our next guest is calling for more transparency on the impact to neighboring communities, from persistent noise pollution to dwindling water supplies. Renowned environmental activist Erin Brockovich joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss her latest campaign.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Bianna, thanks. Erin Brockovich, thanks so much for joining us. You know, most people watching this will have heard your name probably from a movie where one Julia Roberts played you for a very famous lawsuit that came against Pacific Gas and Electric. And this was a settlement because you really were fighting on behalf of people who had their drinking water contaminated.But now what’s interesting is that you are advocating on behalf of people who are affected by data centers in their community. You’ve built this amazing crowdsource to map around the country. your site crashed a couple of times. You’ve got what now? 5,000 reports from all 49 states?

ERIN BROCKOVICH: So it’s over 10,000 submissions, and each submission that comes in, I hand read, and then that gets moved to another team member who hand reads and vets again: zip code, location, all of that kind of information. And then it goes to Excel and it’s put onto the Google Maps. And so what was very interesting is quickly that I was learning, while it was across the country, everybody had the exact same concern. First and foremost, they had no idea what was going on. They weren’t informed. If they did show up, they couldn’t speak. They were asked to leave. And so that became a real place for these people to start becoming concerned about what was happening. I clearly learned for 30 years that communities handle the truth. They like to have a conversation, they like to know what’s going on, but when something’s done in secret or they’re lied to, it becomes a different game. So very quickly, that was my first concern that I could see across the board that was happening for everybody.

SREENIVASAN: What are the kinds of problems that people are writing to you about? I mean, somebody at the sort of county commissioner’s office, so to speak, or whoever does the permitting for these things, whether it’s a city or a state government, somebody is in a conversation with a hyperscaler data center company or one of the big social media companies that uses these, right. Or the AI companies. What is the deal? What are the types of deals that are being done?

BROCKOVICH: Well in the beginning, and again, as this gets bigger and more information comes in, we start learning more about what’s happening. For many of them, it was just blanket – they had no idea. Just all of a sudden this construction was starting in their backyard. So when they would go into city councils, they were told it wasn’t on the meeting. It wasn’t scheduled. They weren’t notified. They didn’t have an opportunity to show up, and that this was done under non-disclosures agreements. So these companies just came in and made deals. What we’re seeing now, as people are knowing more, getting into city council, what happened, a lot of times zoning was changed to permit, to allow for the larger data centers to come in. So they will tell you, and their verbiage to me is secrecy, coverups, lies, denied what they feel was their right to show up to a meeting and have a say about what was happening in their backyard.

So it was like, and nothing was done with any notice. They’re very concerned that there was no environmental impact studies done. They were concerned, are there any regulations, the water, all of that. And so that is what really I think began this huge conversation was secrecy. And it wasn’t one town. I think that’s what’s really surprising me. You know, Hinkley was one town, one aquifer, one chemical. This is a Hinkley in multiple counties and cities in every single state. And the fact that all of it was just in secret is kind of shocking.

SREENIVASAN: In your experience now, having looked at and advocated on behalf of people and seen so many different lawsuits, at least in the, the water pollution space, are there legal tactics that you have figured out from your experience to empower residents to try to get more information when there are these legally binding documents in place that preserve the secrets?

BROCKOVICH: I think we’re watching that process happening. So these communities are very smart, and they will start joining one neighbor and another, then another. And in many of these communities, they have local engineers that work there, people that could explain things to them. And then they start to organize in a thoughtful, meaningful way and showing up at the city councils to try to get information. And that’s the process that we’re watching in the proposal. So there’s many stages happening, which is proposal to construction to up and running. And so they get organized. They network and they start getting facts, information, they inform themselves, and so we are seeing some lawsuits happening. And again, the reason I like the mapping, and this is self-reporting, this is the people who are living, breathing, and experiencing a situation and who better to learn something from than them. And so now city councils and there has been a big turn where they’re doing pauses, moratoriums, bans because the people are showing up. And now these councils are being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars by the companies for breach of an NDA and a contract. And so I actually get emails from mayors and council members, you know, we can’t sustain that type of lawsuit. So then they kind of back away. So those types of lawsuits are occurring. There’s many out there. This is such a local thing. Yeah. And state by state, you’re seeing local attorneys show up to help support that community. And then now you have attorneys defending these council and these cities who are being sued because they broke the contracts.

SREENIVASAN: There was a recent piece in the Atlantic talking about Loudoun County, Virginia, which is a home for lots and lots of different data centers. And look, the county commissioners and the, and people there, the leaders there say, look, we have, we’re projecting $1.3 billion in revenue from the property taxes, from the taxes from these places. You know, the county has used that money to build 32 schools, 16 fire stations. They’ve cut property taxes for homeowners by a third. Right? So there’s this enormous pile of money that people see. And I don’t know, like, so when you get these emails from people, are they taking those sort of costs and benefits into consideration?

BROCKOVICH: Yes, they are. And they understand that this could be a benefit to the county, but it doesn’t always spill over into the county. We’ve watched this happen over and over again. You know, the city council gets money, but they don’t put it towards something that the community feels that they need. It goes to something else, or it’s misappropriated or misbudget. We’ve seen that go on forever. So they are thoughtful of that.

But here’s what I think is so important, they were left out of every equation to have a seat at the table and give us a boundary. How about we start there and not put them in our – literally – backyard. They’re right there. Give us a space — what, 25 miles, 30 miles, but have a conversation.

So they do appreciate that. They do understand that. But it’s coming at a cost to them, where I’m now seeing utility bills, double, tripling. Water bills, double, tripling. They’re extraordinarily concerned for those that are on well water. They’re losing their water pressure. They’re having brownouts, they’re having flickering, their WiFi’s going down. The noise is deafening. And that comes at a great cost. 

SREENIVASAN: But let’s talk a little bit about each of these separate costs that people are complaining to you about and pointing out to you. Let’s start with electricity. The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab estimated that US data centers are using about 4% of all the energy that’s being, you know, generated in the country. What does that number mean? That’s really abstract, but when you hear from people on the ground, what is the cost of these data centers? How does that translate to their personal lives?

BROCKOVICH: Well, you know, so like I pulled out a couple of people that had just written in recently. You know, and they’re coming from all states. So this is a person out of the Massachusetts area who normally had a – this was their water bill around $22 a month, which has now spiked over $350 a month. There’s other reports here on electric. This person is reporting that their summertime electric bill went from about 50 a month to in excess of 300 a month. These are big jumps and it’s a huge strain for them. And there hasn’t been a conversation for these companies that are gonna come in. You pay for the electric. Why do we have to pay that cost? And then we have a facility in our backyard that is straining our other natural resources, and they’re very concerned about the future impact of their health. So I even just received – and again, I really want people to know, we read each submission and try to vet and verify that information – coming out of Texas where they got a notice from the utility that their electric rates could increase 75%.

SREENIVASAN: Let’s talk also a little bit about the water usage and the concerns that people have. For most people watching, they might not understand what does the local aquifer have to do? What’s the water coming outta my sink? What’s the water that’s going into the data center? How are these all connected?

BROCKOVICH: So there’s a whole lot of things that are happening. There’s the municipal side and then there’s people on their own, well, water. And I’m watching a lot, what’s going on with the well water, because these big data centers are coming in rural areas.

The old data centers, and we know were smaller and they were mostly in suburban areas, but now they’re encroaching out into these rural areas of farmland where a lot of people are on their own well water. So they report a, first all, a reduction in water pressure. They, they aren’t getting any pressure. Their water’s just dripping into a bucket. They’re starting to report – especially during construction phases. And these are very, very large centers. I mean, you’re talking, that could be 20 supersized Walmarts in one location, in a big farmland area. And so the aquifers can be disturbed and they start sending in pictures, wait a minute, why is my water this murky brown? Well, you can’t drink it at that point till you know what’s in it. 

Then they report water pressure losses. Then they report that they’re having to drill new wells. They’re starting to report that they’re already in a drought stricken location and the mounts of water that the AI data centers need, they’re very concerned that they could lose their aquifers and they could literally be out of water. 

SREENIVASAN: Yeah. You know, there’s been some pushback to this idea, partly because people say, hey, you know what, look at the number of golf courses there are and what kind of water we use there. And the AI centers use a much, much incredibly smaller fraction. Right? So it’s like, what is the price of our progress? What are we willing to negotiate with? Should we be asking people to water their lawns less? Or should we be making kind of bigger structural changes in our society to try to enable these? I mean, how do you, how do you respond to that idea that this isn’t that much water in the grand scheme of things?

BROCKOVICH: Well, I’m not sure about that, considering how many are coming up and the size of ’em and the massive amounts of, you know, 30 million liters, et cetera, 60 million liters, et cetera, of water that’s being used on top of an already strained system. And I think this is a conversation that needs to be had, because we have limited resources, we have drought conditions, and we have antiquated aged out infrastructure everywhere. And in comparison to a golf course or a data center – you know, you’ve seen the studies where they say they’d rather live next to a nuclear facility than a large data center because this isn’t about one issue. It’s all of our resources. It’s every resource that’s important to them. And they feel that this is a stake that’s too high. You’re not talking just water, you’re talking water, you’re talking land, you’re talking air, you’re talking health, you’re talking, their entire resources and environment feels under assault and is in jeopardy with no conversation to be had. 

SREENIVASAN: Are there specific companies that have been responsive to what they’re seeing through your map? The numbers of letters that you’re talking about? What’s the response been?

BROCKOVICH: We’ve seen one situation where Microsoft came out and educated the community, and they did show up. We have a trust factor at this point, right? Because we should have done that in the beginning. But they did show up. They start to get their questions answered. And, and when that happens, you know, this is where we are seeing some shifts. I believe there’s about 79 municipalities that have now put on bans, moratoriums or a pause. Give us the data. Give us an environmental impact study. Let the council and us re-look at this agenda. So let’s have a pause before we come back and make a vote. 

SREENIVASAN: You know, you’ve also started collecting health reports. You know, when you, when you talk about health, there was a model in 2024 led by Caltech and UC, Riverside, and the researchers there estimated that the data centers could, and I want to emphasize the word could, contribute to increased numbers of asthma symptom cases and premature deaths. And, you know, that this public health costs could be somewhere around $20 billion. What are you seeing? What are people complaining about most?

BROCKOVICH: Well, the noise for one, let’s start right there. They said it, literally, it makes them feel like they’re going mad. I’ve heard from ranchers who are concerned with this long 24 hour humming, hissing. It’s pretty hard to describe, but it’s pretty irritating if you’ve gotta listen to it 24/7. 

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And again, this information comes in and we’re gonna go out and take a look at it. But they’re concerned that in the past year, the cattle haven’t had one live birth. So what is that? So these are things that we have to look at. They talk about headaches from the noise during the construction phase. This is a huge job. And it comes out of nowhere, whether it be the dust, increased asthma, congestion, being delayed to work, watery eyes, itchy skin, all those types of health issues are there. So we kind of monitor what it is from during construction to, again, something that’s up and running. And it does take time for these things to show themselves once something’s up and running.

SREENIVASAN: Should there be a different response from the federal government? Right now, the administration, the president passed an executive order saying, quote, “My administration will utilize federally owned land and resources for the expeditious and orderly development of data centers.” And it goes on to instruct the EPA to change the Clean Water and Clean Air Act regulations to get these facilities built fast. So what would you advise the federal government to do?

BROCKOVICH: Oh, well that’s a really difficult question for me to answer. You know, I’ve done this for 30 years. And watched federal oversight that goes down to state, and then state goes down to local. And I think we’re just on a very slippery slope here. You know, we do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. And we put the cart before the horse. And I’ve learned, communities have learned, I think we all have, that once we do that process, and then the studies come, we come to find out 10 years later, we have a huge problem. I think that we really need to know this information on the up front. So we don’t make that type of mistake again.

This is everything on the table that matters. Our water, our electricity, our land, our food, our wildlife, our animals, and our health. And I would like to see our government take that into account and do the right thing on the upfront. We’re more than capable of doing that. 

SREENIVASAN: Erin Brockovich, thanks so much.

BROCKOVICH: Thank you.