Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has a new mission: bringing more transparency to the construction of data centers and the impact those data centers have on nearby communities.
Brockovich, famous played by Julia Roberts in a film dramatizing his legal case against Pacific Gas & Electric, recently launched a website with a map of data centers throughout the United States.
The website describes the map as “work in progress” that includes data centers informed by members of the surrounding community. In a secondary publicationBrockovich said that after putting out a call for reports on data center-related issues in April, he received nearly 4,000 submissions in the first month alone.
“The most common concern (more than noise, more than water use, more than rising utility bills) is the one word that keeps showing up in presentation after presentation: transparency“, wrote.
Brockovich added that he is not “making a general argument against data centers” or AI, but rather against “the pattern our map documents: projects announced after permits have already been obtained, developers not returning calls, local officials signing non-disclosure agreements before their neighbors knew a project was being considered.”
