Erin Brockovich takes aim at data center secrecy

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has a new mission: Bringing more transparency to data center construction and the impact those data centers have on nearby communities. Brockovich — who was famouslyplayed by Julia Robertsin a film dramatizing her legal case against Pacific Gas & Electric — recentlylaunched a website with a mapof data centers across the United States. The website describes the map as “work in progress” that includes data centers reported by members of the surrounding community. Ina Substack post, Brockovich said that after putting out a call for reports of data center-related issues in April, she received nearly 4,000 submissions in the first month alone. “The single most common concern — more than noise, more than water usage, more than rising utility bills — is the one word that keeps appearing in submission after submission:transparency,” she wrote. Brockovich added that she’s not making a “making a blanket argument against data centers” or AI, but rather against “the pattern our map documents: projects announced after permits are already secured, developers who don’t return calls, local officials who signed NDAs before their neighbors knew a project was being considered.”