By Kyle Jackson
Those who have recently frequented social media are more than likely to have seen a post depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez holding up jars of heavily contaminated water during a hearing with Environmental Protection Agency’s Assistant Administrator for Water Jessica Kramer.
The jars of water were taken from Morgan County, Georgia, next to the construction of a large-scale META AI campus. Each jar was from a different well, showing the extent to which the water quality has declined.
“The only difference between the clean water and this (the contaminated water) was that data center,” AOC said. “I have another one as well (another jar of water), so this wasn’t just one well, it wasn’t just one family’s situation, this is what the drinking water looks like next to that data center.”
Other Georgia residents have also spoken out about the quality of life after the construction of the data center and have provided evidence of it.
Nearby residents have shown the negative impact META’s new data center has on water pressure, appliances, and have even remarked on leftover sediment in their water, which is used for drinking and bathing. This has resulted in residents stockpiling water for basic needs, and will, over time, result in massive costs due to continued shipping to the rural area.
Other residents near data centers throughout the country spoke about the light pollution and noise pollution impacting daily life, with pictures showing the center’s light pollution lighting up homes at night and videos of the noise disturbing local wildlife.
Residents in Holly Ridge, LA, next to META’s Hyperion Data Center, claimed that the data center is negatively impacting their health with byproducts in the air.
“I keep a sinus trouble, and I keep a sore throat all the time,” one elderly resident said in an interview with Gulf State Newsroom. “I call that a health problem when I had never had that much trouble before… breathing in that air with dust.”
Additionally, little is being told to members of the community about the data centers before completion.
This latest water crisis highlights similarities between the water situation in Georgia and the Flint Water Crisis.
The details are undoubtedly different, but the story is the same. Neglect of the environment by political leaders, mainly in testing, cost-cutting, and waste, has resulted in unusable drinking water, bathing water, and various health issues.
The Flint Water Crisis started in 2011 when an emergency manager was appointed.
Later, in 2013, the emergency manager chose to stop pumping treated water from Detroit in favor of temporarily pumping cheaper water from the Flint River until a new pipeline could be constructed.
The switch to the Flint River led the city’s water distribution pipes to corrode and leach contaminants into the drinking water. These concerns were ignored.
Little was told to the residents of Flint before the change.
When pipes started corroding, the lead and other contaminants flowed into people’s homes, wells, and bodies, which left residents looking for an alternative source of water.
The primary difference between the META data center and others like it, and the Flint Water Crisis, is the fact that the Flint Water Crisis was due to government intervention, whereas the META data center is privately owned.
Despite this difference in ownership, political leaders are allowing for the data centers to be constructed by offering tax breaks and other incentives, essentially allowing for centers to be constructed in specific areas.
With the proposed data centers in Michigan, could this happen here if these were to be constructed? If so, could the Flint Water Crisis repeat for the entire state?
On April 15, here in West Michigan, Gaines Township officials held a public hearing about a proposed Microsoft AI data center, where over 600 people spoke against its construction.
Microsoft provided a digital pamphlet highlighting what they plan to do, claiming that they will replenish more water than they use.
That is simply impossible.
The pamphlet stated that Microsoft is planning to use primarily air-cooled methods, using water as a backup method. Despite these reassurances, both have failed to specify the details of how these methods work.
Similarly, other Microsoft data centers promoted similar methods to other counties and townships countrywide. The results speak for themselves, as other centers have not disclosed how often the water needs to be replaced. This is concerning as centers that use water cooling are known to contain PFAs in the water.
A post from QTS (Quality Technology Services or QTS Data Centers) showed a bar graph of QTS’s water consumption for a data center, which illustrated that they use 600,000 gallons of water.
However, the graph only shows consumption rather than usage, effects, and much more that could harm the environment and others.
Additionally, the graph emphasizes how much cornfields use water as a comparison to their consumption, making it appear lower than it is.
