Erin Brockovich, the famed legal crusader whose battle with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) led to a landmark $333 million settlement and inspired the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, is now sounding the alarm over a new threat she says is quietly spreading across the United States: the rapid, often secretive construction of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in American communities.
During an appearance on comedian Theo Vons This Past Weekend podcast, Brockovich disclosed that she has recently been inundated with messages from residents across the country reporting the sudden arrival of massive data facilities in their neighborhoods. According to Breitbart News, these sprawling complexes essential to powering AI systems are increasingly drawing scrutiny for their voracious appetite for water and electricity, as well as the opaque way in which they are being approved and built.
Anytime I get a cluster of emails, thats a sign, Brockovich told Von, explaining that data centers had only recently come onto her radar as a major concern. Then I started looking into it, and my questions werent being answered about data centers, she continued, adding, So, what I do is, I like to see the big picture, and I like to create maps.
In response, the longtime consumer advocate said she created whats called brockovichdatacenter.com, where people if they were having issues with data centers in their backyard could self-report. And Ive created self-reporting registry databases before, she noted, stressing the importance of bypassing bureaucratic gatekeepers, and adding, Think about it. We have no place where we can self-report. Everything that we report goes through an agency.
This is a place where people who I believe are living, breathing, and experiencing these issues are the best source of information, Brockovich said, underscoring her belief that ordinary citizens, not distant regulators or corporate lobbyists, are best positioned to flag emerging environmental and quality-of-life threats. The response was immediate and overwhelming, she added, revealing that the map crashed twice in the first 72 hours after it went live.
I woke up on day three going, Oh my God, its not one town and one aquifer and one data center. Its the entire country, Brockovich recalled, drawing a direct line between her famous 1993 groundwater contamination case in Hinkley, California, and what she now views as a nationwide pattern of unchecked industrial expansion. The reports pouring into her registry, she said, share a disturbing common thread: residents are routinely kept in the dark until it is too late to object.
They had no idea, she said of the affected communities. They woke up to this construction. We werent informed. City Council didnt tell us anything because these big tech group came in and put these City Council members under a nondisclosure.
Brockovich further claimed that this pattern of secrecy and exclusion has happened in every state, suggesting a systemic problem in how local governments are handling the tech industrys demands. Last month, she formally launched a new campaign against the proliferation of AI data centers, which have become a flashpoint not only in the United States but in other countries grappling with the same resource and transparency concerns.
As Breitbart News reported, Georgia offers a stark example of the strain these facilities can place on local infrastructure, with the state struggling to meet the surging water demands of AI data centers. Atlanta planners have urged operators to prioritize community needs and reduce consumption, even as water usage varies widely from one facility to another, raising questions about oversight and accountability.
Opposition to these projects is not merely anecdotal. A recent study found that opponents of AI data center construction have blocked or delayed a record number of projects worth nearly $130 billion so far this year, reflecting a growing backlash against what many see as reckless, top-down development. At the same time, a Gallup poll shows a strong majority of Americans oppose AI data centers being constructed in their local areas, signaling that public sentiment is running well ahead of political and corporate enthusiasm for AI expansion.
The pushback has drawn support from prominent cultural figures as well. In June, country music star Brad Paisley urged citizens to stop the proposed construction of an AI data center slated to be built just 50 yards from the Nashville Zoo, calling it an absolute nightmare scenario, and warning, It would be an enormous monstrosity.
Even some Democrat officials, typically aligned with Big Tech on regulatory matters, are being forced to tap the brakes. Last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) announced the nations first statewide freeze on new data center construction, pausing environmental permits for up to one year while the state drafts comprehensive regulatory standards.
AI data centers have thus emerged as a rare political battleground without neat partisan lines, as both conservatives and leftists object when these resource-hungry complexes are dropped into their backyards without meaningful consent. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller as a definitive guide for how the MAGA movement can shape AI policy in a way that serves humanity, without ceding control of the nations technological future to leftists in Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese Communist Party to dominate the field.
Login